


The Calling

by TheEvangelion



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: BDSM, Corporal Punishment, Dom Kara, Dom Kara Danvers, Dom/sub, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Good Dom Kara, Impact Play, Lena Luthor Needs More Than A Hug, Lena Luthor Needs a Hug, Lesbian Romance, Lesbian Sex, Paddling, Praise Kink, Protective Kara Danvers, Rope Bondage, Sad Lena Luthor, Slow Burn, Spanking, Sub Lena Luthor, Top Kara Danvers, Useless Lesbians, bdsm bar, lesbian bdsm, lesbian love, sex dungeon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:35:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22289503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEvangelion/pseuds/TheEvangelion
Summary: After her toxic marriage finally comes crashing to the ground, Lena accidentally finds herself in a BDSM club. In a strange place, surrounded by strange people, all participating in strangely intriguing things, she becomes somebody unrecognisable. Perhaps being an unrecognisable person is necessary to finally discover who she really is when all of the imposition is stripped away. [Dom Kara!Sub Lena/BDSM Exploration/Gentle On The Hurting Heart/Sex But  Slow Burn Romance]
Relationships: Cat Grant/Leslie Willis, Kara Danvers & Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 164
Kudos: 1011





	1. Chapter 1

Lena paced backwards and forwards through the apartment, completely unsure of what to do with herself. The phone was clutched in hand. The screen often checked, her frantic text messages to Sam still unreplied. She had half a mind to call the police but declaring Sam a missing person after a single afternoon of absence would hardly be a productive endeavour. In the distance, once in a while, the sound of ambulance sirens disturbed her stewing and frightened the deepest parts of her. She worried they might be for Sam. She worried most of all that Sam could be laying in ditch somewhere in need of one that wouldn’t come.

Laying down on the bed did nothing to calm her by the time the sixth hour came and went. She focused on her breathing, if that was even possible. Her jaw ached with all the worrying; it was a peculiar pain that started in the very lowest back parts of her cheeks and made the back of her neck cramp with stress. Lena swallowed and got out of bed, furious and terrified.

The living room didn’t help matters. On the coffee table their wedding picture taunted her. Lena stared at her own grinning smile in the picture with disdain, utterly disgusted with the spineless woman she was back then and ultimately the more spineless woman she had since become. The signs were there from the very first moment they met that they were no good for each other, or so her mom said. How naive they were, Lena thought to herself now. In fact, in some rebellious way, the fact they were so tumultuous as a couple only made her love Sam all the more, but perhaps love was the wrong word altogether. The feelings she felt for Sam were... complicated. They had only become all the more complicated over the last six years of marriage.

The front door finally clicked open and closed again. From where she sat on the sofa, Lena refused the small defeat that would come from having to turn around and look at the human apology.

“Really?” Sam spoke up and kicked off her shoes with a thud. “That’s all I get? Silence? I was hoping a conversation might be possible but nothing is ever so simple with you, Lena.”

“You said you were going for good this time, excuse me for being disappointed that you lied about that too.” Lena bit back the urge to make things right, determined to make her wife suffer, still.

“And you would know all about being a disappointment, wouldn’t you?” Sam walked into the living room with fire in her eyes. “Disappointing friend, disappointing drunk, disappointing wife,” she punctuated the sentence with a hateful glare. “Everything you touch, you ruin.”

“Well, just look at you. On form as always.” Lena glanced away with a bitter laugh. The words no longer hurt her the same way they used to, and instead she just smiled and sighed. “Now I know you’re alive I’ll get an early night's sleep. We’re supposed to be going to a luncheon for the Junior League committee tomorrow, please don’t embarrass me and show up hungover like you usually do. It would make a nice change, all things considered.” Lena rolled stern eyes at her wife as she stood from the sofa.

Lena stormed towards the bedroom, determined to finish the argument with the last word.

“Lena.” Sam offered a heavy pause. “I only came back to get some things and let you know... not to expect me home.”

Lena halted and inhaled sharply, she turned on her feet and looked Sam up and down. Sam stood there chewing her lip awkwardly, but there was a resolution to her. She had obviously given this some thought.

“This is certainly one of your newer and more inventive ways to hurt me, Sam, I will give you that. So what’s the plan this time? You walk away and break my heart and just when I think all hope is lost you come crawling back and tell me that regardless of my faults you can’t bare to be without me?” Lena crossed her arms and tried to seem unphased. She willed her eyes not to water, but sting and pearl up they did.

“Aren’t you exhausted?” Sam’s voice wobbled.

“More than you could ever believe but unlike you I don’t just quit things!” Lena scolded back.

“Look at what we’ve made each other!” Sam snapped and her shoulders became stiff. “We’re just shades of the people we used to be, we’re just the worst parts of ourselves constantly clawing at each other and it-it’s no way to live! I’m not a thing, Lena, I’m a person and you can’t act like not-quitting is for my benefit!”

Lena stalked forward and despite the fury that brimmed within herself she made every atom of her expression cool and collected.

Lena’s voice barely hovered above a whisper, “You love to stand there with your long self aggrandising speeches and pretend this is somehow a tit-for-tat affair,” she sneered and stepped closer until they were nearly nose to nose. “But you were the one who did this to us. You were the one who had another woman in our bed while I was grieving. You are a worthless whore—A gutless whore, even!—and I feel ashamed just having to look at your pathetic face and entertain the idea that my pain and your pain even exist on the same fucking spectrum.” Lena revelled in the brief distraught look in her wife’s eyes.

“And what about the things you’ve done, huh?” Sam grabbed her collars.

Lena felt the hot breath graze her skin from Sam’s gritted teeth. It was a horrible feeling. She suddenly became aware that she was the enemy, and had been for some time.

Sam continued, “You practically pimp me around those pathetic galas so everyone thinks we’re so normal and in love, and for what? So the ladies at your social club tell their powerful husbands you’re the good apple out of a bad bunch???” Her face screwed up furiously. “You want to stand there and call me a whore? Well, that’s just fine! What does it even matter? We’re all just characters in your charade of a life playing the roles you’ve dished out for us and you know in your bitter heart that is the truth!”

“Oh, the truth?” Lena nodded and shoved her wife hard. “Go on, Sam! Who don’t you tell me what you’re truth is! Tell me all the things you’ve just been dying to say!”

“You want the truth?” Sam glared. “You act like I ran away and had some grand affair behind your back. You love to pretend that I got up one day and chased after some girl while you were here, the doting wife, the poor little girl waiting for me to come home!” Sam halted and paused, she released her hands from Lena’s collars and swallowed hard. “The truth is that you were gone, Lena. And she was there. She was so warm. Her skin was so hot. She made the stench of you disappear. She was so easy to understand. And most of all she wanted me back—”

The slap was so sharp and hard that it left Lena’s hand burning instantly with the sting. She watched Sam clutch her cheek, watched her fold and draw a breath too large for her lungs, watched her grit her teeth with a shudder of her throat and refuse the urge to cry. Lena felt herself become an onlooker uninvolved in these events, just stood there dazed, unsure of who she even was anymore.

“I lost my entire family,” Lena muttered and stopped, her throat tightening with that unwelcomed truth. “All of them dead, in an instant, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “So imagine my surprise when I come home one day and find another woman’s lipstick on my pillow? Imagine my fucking surprise when I figured out that I had lost you too!” Lena heaved for breath.

Sam stood up suddenly with her eyes narrowed and her breath beginning to stilt. Her hand snatched at Lena’s throat and suddenly they were nose to nose again, heaving and undulating against each other’s rage. Lena glanced down at the red mark emerging on Sam’s cheek, repulsed and ashamed and aware none of this could be made right anymore.

“Does it make you feel tough when you hit me?” Sam didn’t blink. “Does it make you feel powerful and in control of your car-crash of a life?” Sam pulled open all of Lena’s barely healing wounds. “I think you do it because you get off on me hitting you back, don’t you? I think you get off on someone punishing you because you are too weak and pathetic to deal with the pain that is devouring you whole—don’t you dare!” Sam screamed and caught the open-palm that swung towards her face again.

Lena blinked and held her breath, her wrist was caught in a vice like grip. She didn’t even mean to do it this time. She inhaled deeply and clenched her eyes closed, suddenly aware of just how lost she was.

Sam was right about one thing, Lena did love these fights. She loved having someone to hate, to put her hands on, to punch, to punch her right back, to spit in her face and punish her soul. Most of all, Lena loved having someone around to make her own skin and bones hurt so that just for a few minutes her insides didn’t have to suffer the burden alone. Lena opened her eyes again and was greeted with a look of resolution.

“If you ever.” Sam stopped and looked away, clearing the lump in her throat. “I will ruin you, Lena. If you put your hands on me again you better make sure you kill me because I will go to the police and press charges.”

“Sam—”

“I will go to the newspapers.” Sam didn’t let her even begin to apologise. “I will file a restraining order and tell everyone who will listen what a violent, paranoid drunk you are. I will play the poor beaten-up housewife like it’s just one more role you’ve cast me in and I will take half of everything you own if you ever put your hands on me again, just you watch me.” Sam prodded a stiff finger into her chin.

“That isn’t the truth and they won’t believe it.” Lena scoffed, “You’ve hit me first plenty of times! You’re not just some poor abused wife, no matter how much you like to pretend.” She became nervous, her palms began to grow clammy and cool at the thought of the backlash that would come from such a public exposé.

“You think the police would ever believe a Luthor? I’m not so sure about that.” Sam sneered. “I’m going to get my things packed and so help me god the next time I see you it better be with my divorce attorney present.”

***

Lena sat at the bar with a barely touched neat whiskey in front of her and the entire world on her shoulders and no intention for an early night's sleep. The phone was clutched in hand, and this time the screen was only checked now and then just to be sure that time was still ticking away.

She took an ice cube out of her drink and rested it on a particularly sore spot on her wrist. It was always the aftermath of a good fight that made her feel closest to her wife. It was the knowledge that Sam was somewhere licking her wounds too that did it. In some sick way, Lena always thought of it as poetic. They would hate each other, and fight, and hate each other some more, and then finally they would come around and promise one another that things would be different and they would figure it out—which of course, they never did—and violent and tumultuous as the whole affair was, it was the most enduring love Lena had in her life.

Though, this time was different. This time, Lena knew for certain the marriage wasn’t salvageable. She sighed and knocked back the drink in front of her in two gulps and let the whiskey burn her throat the entire way down. Sam felt a lot like the sharpness of that drink. On the outside, for everyone else, she put on a fantastic show of appearing soft and sweet just like honey, but Sam nothing but gasoline through and through. Sam was a liquor like no other that brought out the very worst of her and no matter how hard she tried Lena never learned how to put the bottle down.

“Haven’t seen you in here before?” A soft voice spoke and saddled up beside her.

Lena glanced the woman up and down, she had dark blonde hair and light blue eyes that cut right through the harsh lighting of the bar. The woman’s features were soft and gentle looking, her expression was one of curiosity and intrigue. It was her lipstick that stuck out the most to Lena, her lips were a creamy-peach colour that were reminiscent of the exact colour she had discovered stained across her crisp white pillowcase. There was a surge of irrational paranoia.

Lena swallowed and suddenly noticed the woman was wearing nothing more than a set of expensive lingerie and a pair of uncomfortably high heels. No wonder the whiskey was so watered down and expensive, Lena chastised herself. Of course she would accidentally wander into a strip club. Of course, she would project her marital problems onto this nameless stripper.

“I’m not looking for anything,” Lena said rudely, turning back to her drink with a deep exhale.

It did nothing to shake the woman off. She simply laughed and rolled her blue eyes, slightly offended but still persistent.

“All things considered it looks to me like you’re running away from something and I have fifteen minutes to kill because these heels are making me want to die. You want to maybe talk about it?” The woman tilted her head and signalled the bartender for another round of drinks.

“I’m just a woman in a bar, Honey.” Lena looked over quite seriously. “I’m just minding my own business.”

“No, you’re not."

“I’m not?”

“Minding your business—I mean. You’re clearly sat here stuck on something, it’s making me feel curious.”  
  
Lena scoffed and rolled her head away. “Must be a slow night if you’ve got time to sit and watch me?”

“There’s no such thing as a slow night in this place.” The woman pulled the cherry out of her drink and stuck it in her mouth, rolling it around her cheeks as if she were thinking about something. “I just don’t see many women wander in here looking as sad as you, that’s all, I guess.” She shrugged and chewed.

Lena exhaled and became unsure on what to say, and so she said nothing at all. The mirror behind the bar was lit up with neon-pink lights strung all the way around it. In the mirror’s reflection, Lena saw a woman she didn’t recognise staring right back at her. The woman in the mirror looked like her but with all of the imposition stripped away. The woman in the mirror wasn’t an orphan, a disappointing wife, or a struggling chief-executive trying to rescue the family name. Instead, she was just a girl in a bar with nothing but the leather jacket on her back and nowhere important to be tonight. It made Lena become homesick for a state that never was, yearning for the faint echo of a woman that she had never been.

“So, I look sad to you?” Lena bit the bait.

The woman set down her drink and quirked a small smile. “You look like you just got into a fight with your boyfriend and by the bruises on your wrists? Well... it looks like you said some things he didn’t like.” She peered down at where the bruises bloomed and poked from Lena’s jacket sleeves.

“And what exactly makes you think I didn’t have it coming?” Lena raised a brow.

“Well it might go someway to explain how you ended up in a bar like this.” The woman didn’t skip a beat. “That I doubt though. You don’t look like the experienced type.” She wrinkled her nose.

“You’ve read me all wrong, I’ve been to more than a few strip clubs.” Lena turned her attention to the drink in front of her and took a long hard sip.

“And what strip clubs have you been to where the girls are walking around in latex with riding crops?”

It was then Lena looked around—truly, looked around—and noticed the other people who had been brushing shoulders with her all evening. The girls who worked here didn’t seem to dance to the music the way strippers normally did. Instead, for the most part, they were sat around with firm powerful stares and tightly-knitted dour lips, talking in hushed tones that couldn’t be heard above the low music of the bar. All of their performance, or lack thereof, was directed towards men who either kneeled or sat beside them submissively with hands in laps and heads bowed.

The strange thing was that there didn’t seem to be any debauchery. There were no drunk men groping the girls or trying to negotiate for rates. There was no overzealous DJ interrupting terrible dance music every few seconds. Instead the dimly-lit bar was reigned over by a sense of order and control. Lena found herself strangely, almost terrifyingly, intrigued.

“So this is a fetish club?” Lena swallowed uncomfortably.

“It’s not an Applebees,” the woman surmised.

“I suppose it’s not,” Lena said quietly and diverted her stare back to the drink in front of her, which suddenly became the only safe place to look. “My name is Lena, by the way.”

“Pretty name for a pretty girl.” Lena blushed and tried her hardest to ignore the come-on.

“And what should I call you?” Lena asked dryly, and the goings on of the establishment were forcibly ignored.

The woman’s stare intensified, as though she were weighing Lena up on a moment to moment basis. “What would you like to call me?” she asked.

The woman couldn’t be older than her mid-twenties, Lena felt offset with the realisation. It stuck as funny in her mind because the still-nameless girl spoke with a sort of cadence that insinuated she was far more calm and gathered than any girl in her mid-twenties should ever be allowed to be. She exuded a calmness that didn’t feel calm at all. Instead, it felt purposeful and heavy. It felt as if the girl saddled next to her was a performance piece. A living, breathing, ethereal caricature that had danced right off the page of a book Lena wasn’t sure she wanted to read. It was the feeling of inadequacy that did it to her, that had her uncomfortable and stuck in memories of all the times she woefully failed to maintain a level of discipline and restraint herself.

“I take it this is part of your dominatrix routine?” Lena managed a smile.

It earned a small laugh. “Well that seems like the sort of question that premises an answer I think would rattle your delicate sensibilities, Lena.” The woman playfully raised her eyebrows and sipped her drink.

“Then rattle away.” Lena propped her chin and tried to seem unphased. “Me and my sensibilities have nowhere special to hurry off to tonight.”

“Well, to answer your question, domination isn’t a routine.” The woman leaned forward into Lena’s space as if she were departing a secret. It earned a small smirk in the process. “It’s not some magic spell that can be cast over another person like black magic. It’s a rhythm that some people hear and others just can’t - it’s a million different things stuffed in the space between thought and words. Then again, what do you care about things like that? You’re just a girl in a bar, after all?” She lifted a brow and pulled away.

Lena became aware of reality once more as the shadow of a figure landed over them. There was a man shuffling closer, hunched over and fumbling with his hands as if he were protecting a secret. Lena diverted her eyes away, embarrassed to be seen by another person in a place like this.

“Erm, th-thanks again for earlier, Kara,” he said quietly and pushed a crumpled hundred dollar bill forward.

The woman put down the drink and patted his cheek, which only seemed to embarrass the man even more. She stuffed the note inside her bra, her smile widening a bit.

“Such a good boy.” She huffed and straightened his collars with perfectly manicured fingers. “I’ll see you next Thursday at eight prompt, Puppy, and remember if you’re late it comes out of your time, not mine.” Her eyes gleamed sternly.

Lena’s eyes nearly bulge out of her skull. The urge to balk was forced back as pleasant goodbyes were exchanged between the pair. Lena glugged the rest of her drink and quickly signalled for another. At least the woman finally had a name now, Lena surmised. The mystery of it had started to niggle her in places she didn’t want to be niggled.

“Sorry about that,” the woman—Kara, apparently—breezed back around with a small sigh.

“I was expecting maybe a carefully-worded Mistress or Ma’am?” Lena blinked and blushed crimson. “I didn’t realise your clients call you by your name.”

“Oh, him?” Kara nodded over her shoulder towards the fumbling man making a beeline for the exit. “He definitely doesn’t call me that while we’re upstairs. He tends to just bark and woof instead,” Kara said as if it were an entirely pedestrian thing to say.

Lena felt herself balk harder.

“That is so oddly specific. I didn’t realise you could get that sort of treatment for a hundred bucks in the city.”

“Don’t be silly of course you can’t - the hundred was a tip.” Kara smirked into her drink. “So, how the hell does a girl like you accidentally wander into a place like this anyway?” Kara sounded almost doubtful, as if Lena was lying about the circumstances.

The insinuation irritated Lena beyond rationality.

“You ask a lot of questions, do you know that?” Lena knitted her brow together.

“Alright, would you like to ask me a question instead in the spirit of new friendship?” Kara offered.

“We’re not friends.” Lena laughed softly.

Lena didn’t have any real friends, she couldn’t even begin to imagine what real friends looked like. There were associates, colleagues, people whose company she could just-about tolerate, and once in a while there were fleeting connections with other people between the thundering whirr of her busy life. But, friends she was definitely in short-supply of. It wasn’t a fact that upset her, on the contrary it was a blessing. Lena knew well and good that friendships required attention that she simply didn’t have the time to give.

Kara levelled a look. “Well, we’re two girls sat at a bar. One of whom accidentally wandered in here with the world on her shoulders if you remember correctly? So I’m just going to go out on a limb and suggest you either need a friend or a distraction. I can be both, so you choose.”

“You are so imposing,” Lena murmured to herself and earned something close to a laugh.

“So I’ve been told,” Kara agreed.

It wasn’t often that Lena felt disarmed and made human like this. In the real world—the one outside where men who liked to pretend to be dogs was not a concept confronted with any sort of frequency—Lena wrangled constantly with maintaining and juggling her responsibilities. She busied herself with keeping up appearances. She made an intricate artform out of deflecting any and all gossip about her sinking marriage. Then there was the inconvenience of a dead family, on top of all of that. The urge to just be a different person altogether itched beneath her skin.

“So why exactly do people come to you?” Lena blurted, wanting to understand these things.

“Why does anybody do—”

“Either answer the question or don’t answer the question, please.” Kara sighed and fixed a thoughtful expression.

“People see different girls here for different reasons. You see Leslie over there?” Kara pointed towards a girl with hair whiter than snow, peculiarly stood there dressed as a teacher in shoes a teacher would _never_ wear for a long day on their feet. “People go to her because they want to suffer. And as for the ones who find their way to me? Well, they tend to want the suffering to stop.” Kara shrugged.

“You make it sound like a man barking like a dog is a form of therapy.” Lena resisted the urge to laugh.

“Why can’t it be?” Kara challenged with a firm stare. “I like people who are hurting in small ways, big ways. I like putting them back together again. And yes, okay, most of it is rooted in sexual gratification for all parties involved,” her voice tapered into a concessionary sigh. “But the people who come to see me don’t want to be abused or degraded, not really at least, not the way vanilla folk seem to think.”

“Then what do they want?” Lena inhaled and found herself caught hook-line-and-sinker.

“They want to be tantalised. They want a safe place to explore themselves. They want the illusion of being punished and forgiven so they can forget whatever it is they need to forget and go to a place where right and wrong just... doesn't exist.” Kara emphasised every word. “And truth be told, I am very good at my job. You can call me a dominatrix or a sadist, whatever helps you make sense of it, but the truth is I just help people feel better. I’m basically a counsellor with a flogger.”

Lena listened to her talk and didn’t do much else, mainly because everything neatly made sense in a very un-neat way. When Kara finished speaking, she felt disappointed that the monologue had stopped.

“So you cased me as soon as I walked in?” Lena tried to be offended, but the thought was actually exhilarating.

“Not in the slightest. I saw the saddest girl in the entire world sitting at the bar and curiosity got the best of me.” Kara grinned and crossed her legs. “You want to finally tell me what got you so sad? I’m still waiting for a concrete answer.”

“Hmm,” Lena finished her drink with a sigh. “And exactly how much would it cost to make you stop asking questions that I don’t want to give a concrete answer too?” She grew brave, and perhaps a tiny bit curious.

“Are you asking me to leave you alone or are you trying to ask me how much my services cost?” Kara’s stare grew acute and serious once more.

Lena wasn’t sure, and the discovery became terrifyingly exciting. She inhaled and hesitated, trying to think of something suave and quick-witted to say. It left her stalled for a moment, a wry and uncomfortable smile worked into her cheeks.

Kara laughed quietly and softened her expression. “Did I break you?” Kara raised a brow.

“No, no! I just...” Lena laughed awkwardly. “I don’t think I’m the kind of person who belongs in a place like this?” She acquiesced uncomfortably.

“Maybe you’re right.” Kara patted Lena’s knee and placed her empty glass down on the bar. “I’m going to wrap up early tonight and get out of here. For what it’s worth, I hope those bruises found their way on your body consensually and if they didn’t,” she lowered her voice, “I hope the guy who did it finds a boot very, very, very far up his ass.” Her eyebrows knitted together quite sternly.

For what felt like the longest time, Lena watched Kara leave. She watched her walk away, watched her bounce towards a spiralling staircase entwined with small neon lights that lead to somewhere unknown. Lena felt herself become stuck in the motions of this perfect stranger. She felt herself become a woman she did not recognise, yearning for a thing she didn’t quite understand, in a place she didn't belong, and her legs suddenly responded before her mind came to a solid decision.

“Kara?” Lena called after her over the music.

Kara turned and smiled politely from the top steps. “Yeah?”

“I have had the worse night you could possibly imagine and I’m sorry if I was stand-offish... it's kind of a habit of mine... but is it too late to change my mind and find out what it is exactly you do? You know, just for the sake of curiosity?” Lena smirked and made herself confident despite the air refusing her lungs.

Kara sighed and walked down the steps, she settled a soft hand on Lena’s warm cheek and paused for a moment. Lena watched her blink slowly, her smile retracting into an almost pitiful expression. The troublemaker tucked a rope of hair behind Lena’s ear and exhaled.

“Whatever it is you want to be punished and forgiven for, I don’t think you’re in the right place mentally to do that tonight, pretty girl.” She nodded to herself and patted Lena’s cheek. “Maybe some other time?"

“I’m not the kind of woman people say no to,” Lena said with a tight laugh and shirked her cheek away, her back stiffening with the uncomfortableness of it. “How much to make you change your mind? Everyone has a price.”

“Not me,” Kara shrugged.

“If you can do what you say you’re so good at I’ll give you a thousand dollars, right here, right now,” Lena challenged and felt herself become desperate. “I just want to forget about a few things for a little while, that’s all. Your methods seem a lot more interesting than a bottle of Jack Daniels, so colour me intrigued.”

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Kara remained firm and softly pushed Lena's shoulder until she was forced to take a step away. “Go home and sleep, come back when you’re not having the worst day ever. I don’t want to domme a girl with bruises on her neck that I don’t think she asked for. I’m sorry if I said anything to make you think that was something that might happen tonight.”

“Mhm.” Lena tried not to seem as annoyed as she was. “Sure, I guess that makes sense.”

Kara hesitated, as if she wanted to say something but was stopping herself. “You have somewhere to go tonight, right?” she finally asked.

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Lena scratched her head and nodded.

“Good. Take care of yourself and come back when you're ready, hopefully a little more clear headed next time.” Kara smiled and nodded. “It was nice meeting you, girl at the bar.” She winked playfully.

“Likewise,” Lena mumbled awkwardly and walked away.

If there was time for ponderment, Lena would be blistering and humiliated by the rebuttal, but before she could get more than ten paces towards the exit she tripped and felt herself careen forward. Her arms stretched out to try and catch herself on something.

“Easy!” A sturdy set of hands and a displeased voice caught her.

“Sorry,” Lena mumbled and straightened herself, shirking away from the stranger’s stiff body in embarrassment.

“Well, would you look at that.” The teacher who caught her huffed in surprise, but then she smirked. “You’re the one who sat at the bar with Kara earlier, right?"

"Yeah, what a gal." Lena tried not to be petulant but knew she was being exactly that.

You’re not the only person she’s turned away. It’s kind of her thing." The dominatrix rolled her eyes with a disapproving grimace.

“Comforting to know. It’s Leslie, right?” Lena exhaled and peered curiously at the woman in front of her.

“Oh that’s adorable! You think we’re on a first name basis just because I stopped you eating shit?” Leslie laughed with a gleaming grin.

“I’m Lena, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t.”

Those two simple words did something to Lena, they made her feel indignant and determined in the most dangerous way possible. She did not like being rebutted one bit. Not from her wife, not from anyone, certainly not this depraved sadist.

Lena lifted her chin and stepped forward. “A pretty girl with a lot of money looking for a good time just landed right in your lap. I would care a great deal if I were you,” Lena hissed slightly, and the urge to be that different person who did exciting things like this pulsated through her veins.

Leslie hesitated and blinked.

“Well you aren’t put off easily, huh?” Leslie smirked at Lena. “I’m listening, you’ve got my attention for the next thirty seconds and you better make it worthwhile.”

“How about I use just a sentence instead?” Lena straightened her leather jacket. “Two thousand dollars, make me forget why it was I stumbled in here.” She lifted her chin bravely.

Leslie scoffed. “If you think I’m going to fuck you—”

“That isn’t what I’m asking for,” Lena interrupted with an offended glare.

Leslie wasn’t her type even if she was looking for that sort of attention. What Lena wanted was something particular and a little violent, something she couldn’t yet quite put her finger on, something that had been insinuated and yet not overtly said. But Leslie smirked and stepped forward until they were nearly nose to nose, and it made Lena gulp with a sense of nervousness that felt thrilling. The thought of her body being made to hurt and sting left her stomach knotted with a peculiar mixture of delight and dread. She wondered whether it was the aspect of relenting control, or the freedom of not having to think too hard that made it so appealing. Truth was, she didn’t really care either way. She was just a girl in a bar. For the first time in her life, she was a nobody. Maybe that was what she was chasing, the thought occurred.

“You...” Leslie said, pushing herself forward into Lena’s space until her mouth was nearly resting on the top of her ear. “...are going to go upstairs and ask for room four. You’re going to go inside and fill in the forms and leave payment in the silver dish, and then you’re going to take all of your clothes off and kneel facing away from the door. Am I understood?”

“Yes Leslie,” Lena gulped.

“It’s Mistress and Ma'am for the rest of the night.” Leslie bit her earlobe and pushed her away, her lips widening into a gleaming smirk. “Go, do as you're told.”

"Yes Leslie." Lena smiled slightly and hoped, privately, that she would be made to pay for that.

***

The man who received her at the top of the stairs was a hulk of a creature. He was a clean six-foot with muscular arms wide enough to strain the material of his shirt, but somehow he was still not half as intimidating as the women Lena had encountered in this place so far. He took two forms of ID and ran through some unexpected yet thorough questions with Lena from a clipboard in his hand.

‘How many drinks have you had tonight?’ _Two._

‘Are you presently, or within the last forty-eight hours been under the influence of drugs that could impair your judgement?’ _No._

'Do you acknowledge the club safeword is red, and should this phrase be uttered by any participant, all activity will cease until consent has been obtained to continue?' _Acknowledged._

'Do you understand that prior to any and all activity, negotiation and consent must be actively discussed between all participants, and said consent is subject to withdrawal at **any time** by **any participant.** This also means that any consensual non-consent play must be explained to either myself or another member of staff with all participating parties present.' _Yes yes._

‘Do you understand that the use of photographic equipment beyond this point is banned without the written consent of all participants?’ _Got it._

‘Do you have any medical issues or health risks we should know about?’ _No._

‘Have you been tested within the last fourteen days for HIV, Hepatitis C, and Hepatitis B, and do you understand that if you have not or cannot produce evidence of a clean result that you will be forbidden from engaging in higher-risk activities such as blood play on the premises?’ _Blood play is a thing? I’m good._

‘Do you understand that this is not a brothel and attempting to solicit any member of staff will result in immediate and permanent expulsion from the establishment?’ _Understood._

Once the questions were ran through, a few basic forms filled in, and all the boxes ticked, the man took a large key from the wall and a piece of neatly folded paper from the drawer, he then pushed it inside Lena’s palm. Lena politely thanked him and did as Leslie instructed, wandering down the dark burgundy hallway until she arrived at a door that had the number four etched into it with gold lettering.

She ignored the muffled, strange noises that echoed from the other doors as she stood in front of her room. Up here, the music was slightly louder, like a blanket that swaddled the sound of debauchery so Lena didn’t have to think too much about what she or anyone else was doing. But once inside the room, Lena felt her bravado begin to wane slightly.

The room was painted matte black with an industrial-looking iron chandelier overhead. It glowed with a warm light that was easy on the eyes, sultry maybe. In the corner a large Chesterfield seat upholstered in burgundy leather looked inviting and comfortable. In the centre, a large bed of sorts covered in shiny black rubber material hung off the floor from reinforced chains. Lena closed the door and tried to ignore the various paddles, whips and accoutrements that were hung on the walls. In the other corner of the room, there was an old-fashioned wooden stock like a relic of the witch trials. A shiver ran down Lena’s spine as she thought about what it would be like to be restrained in such a device while her back suffered the consequences of her curiosity.

The credit card was placed on the silver dish that sat on top of the drawer. She removed and folded her clothes and underwear, thinking, not thinking, entirely removed from reality out of absolute necessity, until there was only one last thing to do: a form that had been folded up and given to her with the key.

Lena opened it and took a fountain pen from on top of the drawer. The form, as it turned out, was less of a form and more of a questionnaire of things she was comfortable exploring and stuff she very much wasn’t. It was separated by proficiency levels as if she were partaking in a new sport. She set the more advanced pages on one side and focused her attention on the beginner and intermediate level questionnaire. She felt her throat grow slightly dry as she began to read the list.

BONDAGE, SENSORY PLAY, AND SUSPENSION:

Blindfolds  
Bondage  
Handcuffs  
Rope Immobilisation  
Rope Suspension  
Harnesses  
Gags  
Collaring  
Stocks  
Spreader Bars  
Nipple Clamps

IMPACT/PERCUSSION PLAY:

Spanking  
Flogging  
Hairbrushes  
Paddle  
Flogger  
Whip  
Dragon Tail  
Belts  
Slapping (Face)  
Slapping (Breasts/Chest, Buttocks)  
Slapping (Genitals)

ACTIVITIES OF A SEXUAL NATURE:

Chastity Devices  
Orgasm Denial  
Forced Masturbation  
Anal Beads  
Anal Plugs (Small)  
Anal Plugs (Medium)  
Anal Plugs (Large)  
Hitachi Vibrator  
Cock and Ball Torture (CBT)

HUMILIATION:

Light Teasing  
Verbal Humiliation  
Spitting  
Name Calling (Slut/Whore)

ROLEPLAYING:

Interrogation  
Punishment  
Sissification  
Medical  
Wrestling  
Teacher/Student  
Other (Please List:)

Each activity had a scale next to it that ranged from: hard-limit, not interested, curious, very interested, and fuck yes. The latter earned a smirk from Lena. She inhaled and steadied herself, selecting mainly ‘curious’ and ‘very interested’ for a handful of activities while the rest were firmly designated as ‘not interested.’ In the end, it left Lena with a relatively small and precise list of things she was decidedly interested in exploring. Namely, all forms of impact play, being restrained, being punished and/or being interrogated.

Lena neatly folded the piece of paper and placed it with her credit card in the silver dish. She kneeled on the cement floor, making sure to face the opposite wall from the door as she had been instructed to do. She closed her eyes and centred herself with a deep exhale, allowing her reservations and embarrassment to leave her. There was something meditative about this, something exciting and calming, simultaneously. The thought of physical pain and punishment was an exciting one. Whenever she had fights with Sam, there was always a delicious and serene calm that came afterwards.

Lena imagined that feeling would be tenfold after tonight. And if not? Well, then at least she tried something new.

[Find more stories like this HERE!](http://theevangelion.tumblr.com)


	2. Chapter 2

“Interesting.” The dominatrix, Leslie, mused over the answered questionnaire. Lena just swallowed and remained removed from this situation, barely even peering in as an onlooker of sorts. “Face slapping, hard impact, restraints... well you’ve come to the right place for that…” She hummed and paused for a moment. “And what exactly are we interrogating you about tonight, Lena?” She glanced up.

“Don’t call me that,” Lena murmured beneath her breath, almost flinching away from her own name.

“Fine,” Leslie huffed and walked around with a wicked smirk. “Bitch it is. What are we interrogating you about tonight, little bitch?” She lightly slapped Lena across the face.

It was the grating, cackling laugh that did it. The tinniness of it. The sharpness of it. The displeasing, mockingness of it. Lena became more unsure of herself on a moment to moment basis as she knelt submissively and rubbed her cheek, which was new territory. Her life was reigned over by a supreme, black and white sense of order. Right. Wrong. Good. Bad. Everything, every concept, truncated, large, difficult or easy, was able to be neatly separated into such categories. 

Tonight was becoming something that neatly fit into all of them and none of them. Lena was exhilarated, repulsed, more than repulsed, and yet unwilling to stand up and put her clothes on despite knowing that she should. Proper, respectable women didn’t do things like this. _Luthors didn’t do things like this._ But here she was, being called _little bitch_ and allowing another woman to mock and slap her in the face. Billionaire, CEO, Harvard alumni, Junior League member, respectable Lena Luthor. Here she was, repulsed by how much she wanted more. 

She wondered if this had always been inside of her or whether it was the fallout with Sam that was causing it, either way — like all decadent, good things — a little would be enough to satiate her appetite, she was certain of that. One night and then no more. Just… a thrill-seeking experience. Just a tourist. Soon, she would go home, back to her steady life. Lena reassured herself with the fact while her face throbbed with warmth and her breathing finally steadied.

Leslie slapped her in the face again, slightly harder this time, drawing her back to the here and now with a sting. 

“I asked you a question, little bitch,” she reminded with a disinterested tone, neither venomously or passionately, simply as though she were stating a mere fact. “Do not make me ask you again.”

“If I told you wouldn’t that defeat the whole point of an interrogation?”

Leslie tossed the questionnaire across the room in a flutter of paper and fixed a serious, cutting expression. “That isn’t how this works. There are no grey areas here. I ask the questions, you answer them honestly, and round and round we go until we have something a little more substantial to work with than tick boxes on a piece of—”

“I’m paying two-thousand dollars.” Lena glared and wrinkled her nose. “Tick boxes are just fine with me. Rough me up, tie me up, beat me up, do what I’ve asked you to do, use creative liberty, and then take your money and go.” Still, even like this, she couldn’t relent control in the ways that mattered most. It was her way or the highway, at least that’s what Sam always said, to which Lena was now realising she may have had a small point.

“Creative liberty?” Leslie lifted a brow.

“If I want you to stop, trust me, you’ll know,” Lena responded quietly.

“You’re embarrassed by this, aren’t you?” Leslie narrowed her eyes and smirked. “Is that what it is, little bitch? Embarrassment? Women like you…” She shook her head and laughed, really laughed, as though Lena were nothing more than a shivering, naked joke. “Desperate to be seen, desperate to be unseen, desperate to be in control, desperate to be out of control.” She opened her eyes and fixed them intensely on Lena. “What am I ever going to do with you, whore?”

“Is this.” Lena blinked and became uncertain. “Have we. Did we just start—”

“You see the Saint Andrew’s Cross? Assume position, we’re about to get acquainted with each other in the only fuckin’ ways that count,” Leslie hissed affirmatively.

Lena blinked and opened her mouth, then closed it again, her forehead slipping into a confused expression. “You… you mean that thing, right?” Lena pointed at the only piece of furniture in the room that resembled a long diagonal cross.

“You mean that thing, ma’am?” Leslie corrected the order of things with a much sharper slap that damn near knocked the taste out of her mouth. “Of course I do! Did you think we were going to put on our Sunday best and walk ourselves down to the city cathedral? Move it, whore!” 

Just like that, Leslie instantly became a witch, or maybe a dragon, maybe even both, hissing and roaring and furious and… strangely a safe thing to lean into. Lena quickly realised her role in all of this or lack thereof, as though she had discovered a new abstract space within herself where there was… nothing. It was all blank, the walls primed and ready to be decorated over.

“Yes ma’am,” Lena whispered and got up off her knees.

“So you do know how to listen. How promising,” Leslie sneered and followed closely behind.

Lena’s wrists were cuffed in position on the cross, her arms long, taut and resting against each diagonal branch of wood. It left her shoulders spread and defenseless. Her ankles were next, restrained in position until her thighs and bottom were spread too. There was a slow, methodical rhythm to what was happening. Leslie wasn’t frantic. Leslie wasn’t in a rush. Leslie was none of the things Lena had imagined a dominatrix might be. The skin goosebumped in the wake of where she had breathed against Lena in passing. Her neck, her shoulder, the back of her thigh, almost as though she were dancing over a body that now belonged to her, for the next few hours at least. Truth be told, Lena rather enjoyed it.

“There’s an indent on your ring finger,” Leslie whispered against the back of the ear, and Lena felt her stomach knot. “Either you’re married or your husband thinks you’re at book club. Which of the two?” It was punctuated with a hard slap against her ass.

“I’m…” Lena murmured and closed her eyes, submersing, relenting, allowing herself to become someone new entirely, somebody who did exciting things like this. “I’m not married anymore. We’re- _well_. We’re separating.”

“Why?” It sounded as though Leslie were rooting around in drawers and cabinets. “Is that what I’m supposed to punish you for? A failed marriage?” she scoffed.

“No. That… that’s still a pretty raw subject.”

“Oh, something is going to be raw alright.” Leslie chuckled and walked around the cross with a wooden object in her hand. “Do you know what this is, bitch?” She lifted it up to Lena’s eyeline.

“The world’s smallest cheese board?” It earned a smirk from the dominatrix, barely an upward twitch in the corner of her mouth, but a smirk nonetheless.

“This is a paddle. And I use it to punish and beat secrets out of dirty, naughty, pretty little sluts like you.” She grabbed Lena’s chin tight and leaned in close. “What do you need to be punished for? What are you hiding from me?”

“Nothing,” Lena answered responsively with a hard swallow. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” she lied.

With pale fingers still wound around Lena’s chin, Leslie snapped her arm around and struck Lena across her bottom with the flat of the paddle. It wasn’t a hard strike. It didn’t need to be. It instantly stung but then dwindled into a hot, spreading sensation over the skin. Eyes closed, huffing, Lena privately understood this was a warm up, a proving ground. She was being felt out, and feeling Leslie out in turn.

“Ma’am,” Leslie corrected her again with a caustic growl. “If you forget again I will duck tape your panties inside your fucking mouth, whore. Disrespectful girls quickly lose the opportunity to be disrespectful in my presence, do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am,” Lena exhaled and felt herself tingle and drift away.

“Again.” Leslie reached around and hit her with the paddle in the same spot, slightly sharper and harder this time. “Just so we’re clear.”

“Yes ma’am,” Lena cried out.

“Again.” Leslie struck the other cheek.

“Yes ma’am!” Lena gasped.

“Again.”

“Yes ma’am, yes ma’am, yes ma’am-” Lena automatically repeated herself after each drum of the paddle.

“Much better, and one for good luck.” It sent Lena sinking into the cross towards her, until they were barely millimeters apart, until Lena could smell the cigarettes and perfume. “So, little bitch, what do you need to be punished for?” It was almost asked tenderly, upwardly, just the slightest burst of warmth piquing Leslie’s voice.

Lena swallowed and blinked. “Nothing in particular, ma’am.”

“I don’t like that answer.”

Lena clenched her eyes and prepared for another strike, one that unexpectedly didn’t come. She opened her eyes again, watched Leslie prowl around somewhere out of sight, and then all she was left with was her thoughts and the sound of clicking heels.

“Either you’re being obtuse because you’re stupid or because you want me to be rougher with you… which is it?” Leslie slapped both ass cheeks hard, caught them in the same instant and sent painful hot ripples through her entire body.

The sting made Lena clench and close her eyes. She sunk into the violence, into the absurdity, into the safeness of it and kept herself right there, wanting more and wanting none of it. Suddenly, her heart wasn’t the only thing hurting anymore, and the equilibrium was felt and clutched and clung too like a comfort blanket.

“I don’t… I’m new at this.” Lena became sheepish and lost.

“Okay, momentary time out,” Leslie’s voice became ordinary and tangible, like an actress stepping out for a cigarette and quick glance of the source material. “What is working for you and what isn’t? Let’s start there.”

“The hitting stuff… that’s working.”

“Okay, that’s good.”

“I want more of that.”

“And what do you want less of?”

“Talking. Back and forthing.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Leslie responded and paused for a moment. “Do you want to drop the interrogation dynamic?” 

“Please.” Lena nodded. “Can you just… hit me hard and keep hitting me until I tell you to stop. Don’t ask questions, just hit.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea for someone as apparently new to all of this as you—”

“Three thousand.”

“Done.” Lena practically heard Leslie shrug. “How bad do you want it?”

“She said you like hurting people…” Lena acquiesced calmly. “Show me. I’ll tell you when I’m ready to stop.”

Leslie sighed and agreed to these requests. “Well, let’s get to it.”

***

Upstairs, the office was an entire bubble universe disconnected from the goings-on of the club. The walls were lined with books, with amateur photography, with artwork and the odd painting, crammed with knick knacks and the comfort of small oddities like a home away from home. 

The leather sofa was worn and often packed with sore bodies kicking off their heels, rubbing their feet, negotiating the next week’s rota despite Cat’s constant assertions that the rota was never, ever negotiable. Still, someone always tried it.

“Carla you’re coming in on Tuesday. So help me god, if I don’t see you here by seven. Jess, Natalie, you can switch shifts but-” Cat stopped and rolled her eyes, petting Sykes along his puffed out chest while yet one more problem shuffled through the door. “Kara, you better be wearing jeans and tennis shoes because somebody downstairs has a GAP fetish. If you say what I think you’re going to say-”

“I’m leaving early?” Kara confirmed the worst and meekly pushed her glasses up her nose. “Oh hi Sykes! Hello there, little boy!” Her cheeks pushed into a smile as she moved forward to pet the sphynx cat perched and purring on Cat’s desk, juggling the strap of her bag on her shoulder away from his curious claws.

“It’s only one, barely even one.” Cat looked at the clock and pursed her lips. “Do you know how many girls want your room, Kara? Show of hands who here has asked me in the last six months for room seven?” Several arms instantly went up from the packed sofa.

Room seven was the jewel of the club. Maybe even the jewel of the city, to Kara at least. The entire building used to be an auditorium in the forties, then a picture house in the fifties and sixties, a dance hall, a nightclub, before the owners stripped everything away in the eighties and remodelled, turned it into two seperate commercial properties like all developers with no respect for architecture did back then. 

Room seven was the only place where all that life and history seemed to still have a distinguishable shape. The ceiling vaulted up to the exposed, damaged mural that once belonged to the auditorium and picture house. The red velvet curtains hung from balconette doors as they had done for forty, maybe fifty years. The walls were covered with signed, gigantic hand painted posters of movies that had played at one time or another. Rock Hudson, Dorothy Dandridge, Diana Dors, they looked over and in with their beaming soft focus smiles and tethered the room to something warm and opulent, something unaffected by the hurrying world outside. 

It was something special and everybody knew it. But Kara, early night or not, always brought in the most money and so room seven was hers for the picking. The others thought that one conferred meaning on to the other but that wasn’t the case. A room was just a room, Kara was the one who lent it significance; her clients, the regulars, the ones who brought in the big money, they would still be here on strike of the dot even if she was in the broom closet. But room seven… it belonged to her as she belonged to it. 

Room seven was home, the only real one she ever had. The threat of it being given to another girl wasn’t taken lightly, and so she instantly thumbed through a couple of extra notes in her pocket.

“Well I can see your displeased,” Kara said diplomatically.

“Mhm. How much did you make tonight?” Cat cut to the chase.

“Enough to go home early.” Kara produced a small role of notes from her pocket and placed her dues on the desk, plus a little extra to smooth things over. “Oh, about next week’s rota—”

“Do not!” Cat barked loudly and pointed her finger.

“I’m kidding.” Kara rolled her eyes and sat down in the chair opposite the desk. “Have I ever showed up late for work or missed a shift?” She lifted a knowing brow.

“No you just leave half way through them,” Cat murmured and counted the bills, her tone softening along with her furrow. “Why are you girls still here?” She snapped her stare over to the packed sofa. “Go! Work the bar downstairs! Put some envelopes on the end of my desk before I put some bruises on the end of you!” It sent them scurrying.

“You sure you’re retired?” Kara bit her smirk as the last one quietly closed the door behind herself.

“Well.” Cat blinked and stuffed the money in her top drawer. “You do what you love and you never work a day in your life.”

“How did your hospital appointment go this morning?”

Cat balked and stared as though she had just been asked how many fingers she liked up her ass by a stranger at the bus stop. Her brow furrowed, her mouth twitched, and Kara instantly regretted asking.

“If you ever—”

“I care.” Kara lifted her hands up defensively. “That’s all. I care about you, you’re like a mom to me and I… I worry,” she sighed and pushed a gentle, brief expression of concern up her cheeks.

“I find that insulting.”

“That I care about you?” Kara lifted a brow.

Cat scoffed, “That you think I’m old enough to be your mom.”

“But everything... everything’s okay right?” Kara insisted, dancing around the edge of the topic. “There’s nothing you need? Nothing I can do to help?”

Cat rolled her eyes. “Remind me to fire you the next time you open my mail—which by the way—is a federal crime.”

“Valid point but you did _specifically_ _ask_ me to open the mail on your desk,” Kara countered.

“The brown envelope!” Cat hissed. “I told you to open the brown envelope! I told you to use your math brain and work out how long we can keep this place afloat with the rent hike!” She pinched the bridge of her nose as they threshed this argument out for the nth time.

“Well to answer that question I did do the math. Assuming you want this place to turn a profit? You have about a year, maybe shorter, maybe longer.”

Cat’s expression became mute and thoughtful, as though she were here and somewhere else, daydreaming for a split second. She swallowed and rubbed her temple, then she quickly shook it off and became animated once again.

“Fifteen years I’ve had this place… _fucking scavengers_.”

“It’s prime real estate.” Kara shrugged. “They don’t want you to pay the new rent, Cat. They want you to pack up and leave so they can turn this place into a boutique hotel… maybe an artisanal coffee shop now everything is gentrified.” It made them both cringe at the thought.

Cat grouched and put Sykes on her lap. “Over my dead body will anyone ever sit down to edit their shitty psuedo-feminist podcast in this building,” she grumbled and fussed him.

“That’s the spirit,” Kara commended her.

The door creaked open and turned both of their heads. Leslie pushed into the room with an ashen expression, her lips between her teeth and her eyes firmly on the floor in front of her.

“Cat, you busy?” Leslie asked sheepishly.

“Don’t forget yourself, pretty girl.” Cat shot her the kind of look that dared her to defy their relationship protocol again. “You know how I feel about sloppy deference...”

Leslie was totally unscathed by the reprimand. “Mistress, are you busy?” she corrected herself hurriedly.

There was something that made sense and simultaneously made no sense about Cat and Leslie’s relationship, Kara thought. Cat liked her world straight-forward, measured, high protocol, neat and ordered with everything and everyone in their right place. Leslie was… none of those things. Leslie was rough around the edges, petulant, crass, difficult, caustically funny, but _so_ incredibly difficult. They made sense together though, lending and borrowing the best bits of each other. Cat straightened her out and offered routine, Leslie reminded Cat there were other things to live for besides work. It worked, which was more than Kara could say for her love life or lack thereof.

“Never too busy for you, precious. Sit down and wait a moment.” Cat pointed at the adjacent chair in front of her desk. “Kara, if we put on more community events would that bring in the numbers we—”

“Mistress it’s urgent,” Leslie interrupted with a nervous look in her eyes.

“Spit it out.” Cat lifted a brow in her direction.

“We’ve got a situation.” Leslie gulped. “There’s a walk-in client downstairs and I think… I think she’s crashed.”

“She blacked out?” Cat stood up instantly.

“More like she’s stuck on her loading screen.”

Cat blinked and nodded. “Put her in the cosy, turn the heater up, sugary food, warm drinks, the first few bad cases of subdrop are difficult but you’re not an apprentice anymore you should know—”

“It’s— it’s better if you take a look for yourself, Ma’am.” Leslie gulped. “Before you say anything else… before you see for yourself... I know I’m in big trouble so let’s just get that out of the way now.” Leslie bowed her head submissively.

Cat glanced at Kara. “You go home for the night.” She turned back to her submissive. “And as for you, Leslie, get your strip off the door and put yourself over my desk. I’ll deal with you when I come back and you better have a damn good explanation when I do.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

Cat stopped as she walked past and looked at Leslie, assessing the damage. “How much am I going to have to write off? How much is she in the hole for?”

“Oh…” Leslie made a funny expression and shook her head, as though she had forgotten, as though she were adding up the numbers she had agreed with the client plus tax and change. “Three thousand dollars-ish?”

“ _Ish?!_ ” Cat’s eyes nearly bulged out of her skull. “A walk-in off the street puts up ten times your hourly and you didn’t think to let someone know?”

Kara closed her eyes and instantly remembered the girl at the bar, _Lena_.

“I better come with you.” Kara stood up and resigned herself to a not-so-early night. “If it’s who I think it is she was a total no-go. Fight with the boyfriend, bruises all over her, WASPy type. She didn’t even notice she was in a BDSM club. If daddy is a lawyer we’re fucked six ways to Sunday.” 

Kara watched the way Leslie glared harder and harder, saying in so many words in true Leslie fashion, _‘fucking shut your fucking mouth you fucking fuck!’_

“Big trouble!” Cat snapped at Leslie with a voice to big for her lungs. “Big, big, big, big trouble. _Huge trouble_. The biggest.”

“Mistress in my defence I didn’t know those bruises were—”

“A clusterfuck of trouble.” Cat doubled down with a growl, eyes closed and utterly unable to open them for the headache that was brewing. “A fucking gravitational pull, the trouble is so goddamn big.”

“Yes Mistress, I’ll get the cane.”

“The tawse. That is **after** you come and help fix the problem **you** made.” Cat instantly corrected her. “But _do not_ tempt me.”

***

A few more decent hits with the single-tail and her back would have split open. The bruises on her ass were blistered and raw, blueing and bright red, the stripes on her back criss-crossed angrily. But still the girl stood in the same spot, trembling, unmoving, her wrists hanging awkwardly at either hip as though she didn’t know what to do with her arms now they had been cut loose and given back to her. It was the four of them in the room and yet only three of them in the room, Lena was somewhere else entirely.

“Her forms?” Cat whispered.

Cat didn’t take her eyes away from assessing the damage across the woman’s back and bottom, Kara too. This… this was going to be a problem if their mysterious newbie walk-in with three thousand dollars to toss around _wanted_ _it_ to become a problem come daylight.

“All signed, everything consented too, John’s front of house tonight and he checked in with us at least twice. I kept checking in with her too, I was the one who stopped the scene—” They both look at Leslie peculiarly at that. “She kept saying green but she just... I mean, look at her.” Leslie gestured with her hand at the vacant creature wobbling in front of them. “I stopped as soon as I realised she checked out.”

“Okay, that’s- _okay_.” Cat left it there despite the urge to bite and reprimand. “And her ID?”

“Says Lena Luthor.” Leslie shrugged.

Kara felt her mouth grow dry. Her and Cat instantly looked at each other, jaws tight, fists wound, swallowing hard, on the brink of a problem so monumentally big that the rent hike now seemed tiny in comparison. Unless it was a coincidence of two women sharing the same name... the most powerful woman in the city, hell, the entire coast, was currently system rebooting right here in room four. There weren’t many pictures in the press or tabloids, something to do with a privacy injunction, but the ages added up too. 

Everyone knew what happened to the Luthors who owned L-Corp. Everyone knew that the youngest daughter was the only one left out of the whole bunch to run the conglomerate. And L-Corp owned damn near every building in the city worth owning too, probably this one if the rent hike was anything to go by, not that she would likely know it if she stumbled in tonight through happenstance like she said.

“What do we do?” Cat mouthed.

“Hey it’s Lena, right?” Kara spoke up and watched the woman’s head twitch responsively. “Hey, you with me honey? It’s Kara, from earlier at the bar?” She moved toward the woman.

“Y-yeah. I-I remember,” Lena barely choked the words out.

“Good, that’s good. So you didn’t go home?” Kara stopped at her side and resisted the urge to reach out and touch her, unsure of where the boundaries and limits might be.

“I can keep going.” Lena snapped around and stared at Kara with fixed green eyes, stared at her despite not being there, stared despite being a woman removed from herself. “I want- I want to k-keep going.” She nodded firmly.

“I don’t think you want to do that tonight, not really at least,” Kara said with down-turned lips and a knitted brow.

“No I d-do.” Lena wouldn’t relent. “I p-paid. I want my time.”

Leslie spoke up from Cat’s side, “You guys see what I mean yet?” It earned a small nudge from her mistress to be quiet.

“We’re not going to charge you,” Cat said. “Tonight was on the house, I insist.”

It was the only card she had to play given the circumstances, the only mitigation she could put in place. If there was no financial transaction then there was nothing to dispute come sunrise, they would all just wash their hands and pretend none of it had happened — such was always the case with powerful types. Kara understood the reasoning but still felt it was the wrong tactic. Perhaps this wasn’t a problem at all. Perhaps this was… a bumpy start to a solution for all parties involved. She wasn’t sure how, but she was sure there was a way.

“You really wanted to earn your stripes, huh?” Kara peered over her shoulder and spine. “You always this much of an overachiever, pretty girl?”

Lena’s eyes twitched at that, but she said nothing, did nothing, just stood there and swallowed hard and went over the same script in her head. “I w-want to keep going.” She closed her eyes. “I can keep—”

“Oh I know you can,” Kara said softly but lifted her finger in a stern, hushing motion. “I know you could keep going. I know you’re a tough girl. _Why_ do you want to keep going?”

Lena paused and the clogs began to turn behind her eyes, almost.

“B-because.” She paused and blinked. “Because…”

“Because it’s pleasurable? Because it’s productive for you?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Kara ordered tenderly and fixed a serious expression. She tucked a rope of sweaty raven hair off the woman’s brow and petted the side of her jaw. “You’re somewhere else right now and that’s okay, that’s valid. I just need to know where exactly. So why exactly do you want to keep going?”

Lena paused for the longest time, her eyes fixed and glazed, her body trembling with the adrenalin. “Because I deserve it,” she finally mumbled.

“No you don’t.”

“You don’t know the things I did.”

“I don’t need to.”

“I… I deserve this.” Lena closed her eyes.

“No. Not tonight, pretty girl,” Kara hushed and instinctively pulled her close, held her against her chest and felt out every twitch and tremble of muscle for any sign of resistance. There was none, just a slack body sinking into and against the sturdy comfort her own. “You did such a good job. You paid your penance, you wanted to be punished and you were. It’s done now, it’s forgiven. You’re a good girl and whatever you did that brought you here tonight, it’s been made right. Okay?”

Kara stood there, another woman’s tears dripping on the shoulder of her sweater, unbothered by it, undeterred, utterly in her element if she ever was. Business problems, rent, money, tangible concepts that all went towards her quality of life, that’s where she came undone. But this? The grey areas? This was what she excelled at and enjoyed. Lena was petted and held and crooned over and held tighter. Kara felt better for it too, having a hurting broken person to clutch and busy herself with.

“Let’s get you cleaned up. I’m heading your way I’ll drop you home,” Kara murmured.

“You don’t know where I live.”

“And she’s back in the room ladies,” Kara joked to the concerned others, which made Lena laugh slightly too, barely even a puff of air but it was there, no doubt. “Come on you, if we hurry we can grab a milkshake from a place I know on the way. Something sweet, fix you right up.”

“My PT will make tonight look like a church choir rehearsal if he finds out…”

“Just our secret,” Kara promised.

[Find this ahead of the curve plus more similar stories HERE.](http://theevangelion.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 3

_Where are you?_

Lena waited for the text to Sam to turn blue. She waited for it to be received. She waited for it to be read. She waited for thought bubbles that signalled a reply being formed; and she waited, inevitably, for an argument. The Junior League luncheon had started and still, she had heard nothing from her estranged wife. It was logical, it was understandable, it was gut-wrenchingly infuriating, because apparently Sam must have really meant it when she said they were finished. And so the committee luncheon droned on without Lena almost, she was there and simultaneously in at least six other places.

She tried not to be embarrassed about the night before, now wasn’t the time for that. There had come a point where she checked out, an indistinguishable block of time that she couldn’t recall, and perhaps it was best that way. She remembered everything up to the beating, she remembered crying afterwards, she remembered the girl from the bar driving her home and stopping for milkshakes on the way. The stuff that she couldn’t recall was probably a mercy.

What stuck as strange, or maybe infuriating, was that she had invited Kara upstairs to the apartment. Kara politely declined the offer without seemingly a second thought. Lena was the wealthiest woman in the country and that… that had weight. People didn’t just decline her, not if they had any common sense, and she was completely certain that Kara knew exactly who she was. But then she said something that stuck with Lena, something that nobody had ever said to her before.

‘If I go upstairs, I’m going to see your gigantic apartment and fancy artwork and billionaire finery and you’re not going to be the girl at the bar anymore. You’re going to be Lena Luthor, CEO of Snore-Corp. And so I think we should draw a line in the sand there, just in case.’ Kara had shrugged it off while she rummaged through her bag for salves and ointments that would apparently take the edge off.

‘Just in case what exactly?’ Lena had replied, rather defensively.

‘In case you ever feel like coming back and being… just a girl at the bar?’

 _Just a girl in a bar_ , Lena now faintly smiled at the thought. What a rare treasure that would be. To be someone and no one, to be invisible, to have nothing to offer but what was on her back and in her heart, like an alternate reality that was so far fetched that it just simply didn’t make sense in the context of this one. Of course, it was out of the question. It had been a thrill-seeking experience, a one off, a gracefully abridged mid-life crisis, and also how could she ever show her face in there again after what had happened? Albeit she wasn’t sure exactly on everything that had happened… although the violent bruises that coated her entire back and bottom gave her a pretty good idea.

“Oh Lena darling!” Emily Rothschild breezed over, air kissing and prim. “Let me take your jacket—”

“Oh no, no!” Lena stiffened and re-buttoned her suit jacket like it were a piece of armour. “I have the most terrible cold. Still, you know me...” Lena raised her brow emphatically.

“Never one to miss a league bruncheon, I know.” Emily pushed half a smile, her eyes slipping around the room as though she were looking for a missing person. “And Sam?”

Lena paused and forced a tight, measured smile. “Working,” she said, casually.

“Oh a pity!” Emily slumped and pouted. “She really is the life of these things, isn’t she?”

“So everybody assures me,” Lena thinly laughed.

Emily leaned forward as though she were departing a secret, “I had the most riveting of conversations with Michael over breakfast this morning. He seems to think this... _development_ with the L-Corp property portfolio is all rather interesting,” she whispered her husband’s business interests like a covert operative of sorts. “Is it true you’re thinking of selling?”

Lena smiled at that. “L-Corp has a hand in most sectors… I would be lying if I said I kept up to date with the gossip mill.”

“Well I would imagine Lena Luthor would know if something like that was on the horizon?” Emily lifted a brow and sipped her drink.

“Perhaps your husband should call me.” Lena produced a business card, a conversation halter of sorts. “The Rothschilds’ and Luthors’ business interests have always had a funny way of aligning… haven’t they?” She smiled as though she too were departing a secret, a secret that would prove most profitable for the Rothschilds.

Emily pursed a funny, intrigued expression and accepted the business card, tucking it away in the pocket of her purse. “He’s away on business in the Caymans but I’ll let him know you’re expecting his call, Lena. If you’ll excuse me I have to go and play welcome party to the Eastern Bloc.” She smirked and nodded to the Russians.

“I’ll have to be leaving soon, pass on mine too.”

“Lucky for some.” Emily rolled her eyes and laughed. 

Lena watched Emily step away, wandering off and waving down the wives of the Eastern Bloc, whom were all spouses of the oligarchs who maintained sprawling residences in the city for reasons that were absolutely, definitely, _certainly_ not tax-related.

It was an irrelevant fact, all things considered. Luncheons were never luncheons for the sake of charity or good deeds — or rarely even lunch for that matter. Luncheons were business meetings just like the rest of them, and everyone who went to them knew that too. It was a place to gather information, to leak small drips of information in turn, to feel out the changing winds of the global 1% and set sails accordingly. 

The Luthors, the Rothschilds, Rockerfellars, Grosvenors, Gettys, hell, even the Abromovichs. They all sent delegates for tea and pleasantries, like a convening of the United Nations. On the outside it was curt smiles and small finger sandwiches; but with nothing more than a few clicks of their iPhones the people in this room could start wars and end them all before the second course. Lena knew that much alright, her family had started more than a few over the years. 

Strangely, however, these social events were always pleasant and cordial — perhaps if only because everyone knew their respective places and positions, like an unspoken order of sorts. The Rothschilds and Rockerfellars stuck to banking and financing, the Grosvenors and Johnsons were tied up in pharmaceuticals, the Gettys in American oil, the Abromovichs in Russian oil, and as for the Luthors?

The Luthors had a hand in absolutely everything. 

Property, media, gas, oil, pharmaceuticals, hell, L-Corp had even acquired majority equity in half of the NFL teams over the years through shell companies hidden behind shell companies hidden behind shell companies. So long as there was a sports game, Lena’s team were playing, and she and everyone else were making money one way or another despite the twists and turns of the economy. 

_Economy_ , now that was a word that belonged to the working class. It simply did not exist in the lexicon of people as wealthy as them.

The trouble was that despite L-Corp’s many subsidiaries and interests, Lena was a scientist before a businesswoman, and her personal interests neatly fit into nothing on the L-Corp books. What tickled her was something new… something the 1% tended to keep their noses out of: real philanthropy and global sustainability. Clean energy, the cure of all disease, the eradication of war, free housing, the end of debt altogether, the end of the word _economy_ for everyone — not just the ruling class.

In that regard, maybe Lena was the real covert operative. What she wanted threatened their entire order. If clean, sustainable fusion energy was given to the third world then god forbid, those dusty-foot savages might get the clever idea to sell it back to the ruling white classes both East and West of the horizon to better their own global foothold. No more wars for oil. No more coal mines. No more drilling up the sea bed and sucking it dry. What would the Gettys and Abramovichs do then? _Utter madness._

And as for a cure to all disease, if nobody was sick or eating themselves to death with cheap fast food — often times, purposely the only source of food they could afford — then the pharmaceutical industry was on its spine too. Where would that leave Mcdonalds? Nestle? Johnson & Johnson? Baby powder and cotton buds? _Insanity._

Without war, without debt, without sickness, without fossil fuels, the people in this room were out of business. Together they all spoke one language, profit. But unluckily for them, Lena was more fluent than most, and in time, she was going to stack the whole game against them. After all, so long as there was a game, her team were winning.

Lena stiffened and hissed as a hand gently pressed against her shoulder, awaking a pain she had almost managed the necessity of forgetting about.

“Ms Luthor, your 1pm?” Her assistant, Rebecca, reminded.

“Thank you.” Lena straightened herself.

***

_Where are you?_

Kara stared at her phone and watched the ticks immediately turn blue, and the reply was almost as instantaneous.

_Are you my fucking keeper?_

Cat certainly wasn’t in a mood to mince her words, then again when was she ever. Another reply shortly followed, she was upstairs in the office watching Golden Girls. It made sense, despite the lights being off, despite the stools still sitting upturned on the bar. Of course Cat was here, she was _always_ here. What did not make sense was why she was occupying the hour before opening time with Dorothy, Blanche and Rose. Cat was a workaholic through and through, do what you love and you never work a day in your life was her mantra. It sat strange in Kara’s mind, maybe she really was going soft in her age.

The stairs were clambered, the women warmly bid hello to, the ones she had most recently managed to piss off carefully dodged around. That much was nothing new. Kara had a habit of rubbing some people the wrong way, which she didn’t particularly try to do, it just always sort of happened. Perhaps she would go soft in her age too, learn to bite her tongue a bit more at least.

Jeans folded neatly back into her bag, glasses removed, contacts blinked in to position, legs and stomach coated generously in talcum powder before the latex lingerie was carefully put on, she donned her uniform and became a different kind of Kara. _God bless Johnson & Johnson_, she thought to herself as she wiped away the excess baby powder from her skin, they always made latex night as close to a breeze as it was ever going to get.

Once everything was taut and in place, Kara gave herself the once over and approved. The latex set was a light clear pinkish colour, see through but not obscene. The ghosts of nipples were visible, the suggestion of a vagina on display, but she was somehow not overtly naked, or at least it didn’t feel that way. To Kara, she never felt more powerful than she did when the glasses came off and the fetishwear went on. 

For some people, it was leather that did it. For others, masks or suits. For her, lingerie in all forms was the superhero costume of choice. It was powerful and feminine, a medium that offered creative variety, and in it she could be anybody she needed to be. Soft and affirming, bitchy and cruel, an owner, a mistress, a mommy, a goddess, it all started with nothing more than the right set of underwear. If this place went under and turned into that artisanal coffee shop they all feared, perhaps that’s what she would write her blog about. The power of the bikini cut, or lack thereof.

“And if you threw a party,” Cat hummed with her back turned to the office door and petted the woman knelt quietly beside her, Leslie completely oblivious to Kara’s presence too. “Invited everyone you knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me and the card attached would say…”

“Ask for another rota change and you’ll be dead,” Kara finished.

Cat turned around in her chair. “Ha ha.” She rolled her eyes.

“Thought it would tickle you.”

“Am I supposed to be staring up your vulva right now? I can see when your period is due.”

“Well you always did say I was your favourite little slut,” Kara reminded jokingly with a shrug, smirking at a time from long before they were anywhere close to platonic equals.

Leslie simmered at it nonetheless and stared up at her mistress with a look that could kill.

“Oh hush you,” Cat whispered and rubbed the back of Leslie’s neck. “You’re my favourite _big_ slut, you’re-” She exhaled and thought about it for half a moment. “My happily-ever-after slut?”

“Good save, Mistress.”

“Thank you, I thought so too.”

Kara plonked herself down in the chair and remembered why she had came upstairs in the first place.

“Can I speak to you in private?”

“Fuck off Kara,” Leslie snapped back.

“Okay, easy.” Kara turned to the kneeling woman who was anything but meak and small. “It’s about personal stuff, with me.”

Cat rolled her eyes and waved her hand toward the door. “Leslie go and set downstairs up, clean, vacuum, pretend you haven’t smoked a cigarette in the back despite how many times I tell you not to smoke cigarettes in the back.”

“But why does she never have to—”

“Leslie.” Cat shot her a look. “Do you want me to start deducting good girl stars from your chart?” 

She pointed to the grid on the wall, nine stars all neatly in a line with only one empty space before a trip to the zoo. If the picture of huddled up Gentoo penguins was anything to go by, it was either that or a jaunt to the Antarctic. Kara suspected the former but had no doubts that it would be the latter if Leslie begged hard enough. Cat was soft on the girl in a way she had never been with any of the ones she had owned in the past. They all knew it, they were all without resentment about it too.

“Fine,” Leslie sulked and got up off her knees. “Still don’t understand why Kara never gets put on set up duty but whatever,” she murmured under her breath on the way to the door.

“I can’t send her downstairs with her cunt crack grinning like that before dark! She’ll scare the delivery boys away!” Cat reasoned. Kara laughed, completely unphased.

“Happily-ever-after slut,” Leslie almost comforted herself as she shuffled out of the room. “Magnus-opus slut,” she added.

“ _Magnus-opus slut_. Now I like the sound of that, gets right in your chest. Love you, kitten.” Cat bid her off with a warm smile. She turned back to Kara as the door closed, the smile immediately falling off her cheeks. “Personal issues with you? I’ve heard it all now. What do you really want to talk about?”

“Your mammogram results—”

“I will put you in a canon and fire you into the fucking sunset.”

“It said stage four. It said stage four and here you are, two weeks later, three weeks later, going on like nothing has happened.” Kara lifted her hands in exasperation. “When is your surgery? You’re going to need the help and I can’t be most effective to you if you’re not going to clue me—” Cat lifted her finger and halted it in its tracks.

“You think this is you being assertive and it’s not. It’s you being a pushy, whiney, frightened little girl and I took great pride in believing I had trained that out of you the hard way around. I did not invest all of that time and energy into molding you to be proven wrong this late in the game.” Cat levelled a serious look. “My word is final, and I will not tell you again to stop pushing on this.”

“Does Leslie know?” Kara refused to back down.

“If she finds out a whisper of it I will hit you where it hurts, Kara.” Cat made no bones about it, but then the steeliness melted slightly and her lips twitched, as though she were really, really thinking about how Leslie fitted into all of this. “Leslie doesn’t know and she isn’t going to know until it gets to that point.” She blinked and looked away.

“When will that point be?”

“When I decide we’ve reached that point.” Cat turned her stare back and shuffled in her chair. “I can’t do my job if I’m recovering from surgery, I can’t lead from a chemo ward.”

Kara snapped suddenly, “You can’t fucking do your job if you’re dead, Cat!”

“There it is.” Cat pointed. “Pushy, whiney, frightened little girl. God, it’s like you just wandered in off the street all over again...” She shook her head and remembered those days without fondness. “I’m not going to die, you should be so lucky.”

“Fine,” Kara relented with a disapproving sigh. “Can I at least have Sykes if you—”

“The sunset, I will fire your fucking body far into it.” Cat glared but bit the faintest corner of a smirk. “Anyway spill the beans, I haven’t seen you since Bambi stumbled out of here.”

“She says, as though it wasn’t only a few days ago.” Kara rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing to spill. She invited me upstairs, I said no. I told her to come back if she wanted to, and presumably, from the current look of horror on your face, she hasn’t come back.”

“You said no?” Cat couldn’t blink for the shock.

“The first rule of The Four Horsewomen—”

“Don’t recite my fucking rules to me, I know them. I know rule number one is no solicitation, no going home with clients, no shitting where we eat. It’s my rule and I made it up,” Cat insisted and shook her head in utter exasperation. “But… all things considered… did you not think the billionairess who owns half the goddamn east coast, probably our building too if you followed the money, would be a pretty good weapon to have in the back pocket?”

Kara rolled her eyes. “Oh so when _you_ want us to fuck clients _then_ it’s okay.”

“That isn’t what I’m saying.” Cat folded her arms. “But did it seriously not even cross your mind just to… you know… take one for the fucking team?”

“I don’t think she’ll come back, Cat. I saw it in her eyes when I said no to topping her, when I said no to going upstairs to her apartment, she didn’t know how to process it. I can’t work with spoiled entitled types.”

“Funny, you have enough of them on your regular list,” Cat disapproved.

“City worker and entitled type are two separate kettles of fish. It’s who you are when I say no the first time that matters, not the second or third.”

The desk phone rang, number withheld flashing up on the small screen. Sykes purred and clambered over it, his tail swishing and curling, unbothered by who it might be. The other two however shared a look, a feeling, a similar kind of stalling sensation. It couldn’t be… it wouldn’t be. Kara laughed and shook it off.

“Four Horsewomen, hello?” Cat answered.

Kara watched her nod, watched her stay calm, watched her nod some more. The relief was instantaneous, of course it wasn’t Lena Luthor.

“You’re out of luck. Her diary is booked out for the next three months. Kara is our most sought after dominatrix and her preferred client list rarely opens—” Cat sat back and her expression went blank. “I see,” she said.

Privy to only half of the conversation, Kara listened and did nothing else.

“Hon, it doesn’t work that way. You tell me a number and I’ll tell you if you’re in the right ballpark.”

“No, it’s going to have to be south of that.”

“Way further south.”

“Mhm. Double it, you’ll be along the right lines.”

“Look I don’t know what to tell you, if you want the best then you pay for the best. I don’t care if you think it’s more than a fair offer, to tell you the truth, it doesn’t even touch the sides. I’m afraid we’re very busy, you’ll have to call back when you’re ready to not waste my time.” Cat hung up the phone with a slam.

Kara sat there, already aware of the answer, already aware the question itself was moot. Still, she inhaled and pursed her lips.

“Was that… is that who I think it was?” She lifted her brows.

Cat didn’t reply, she just smiled and lifted her finger as though to say, ‘ _Wait for it._ ’

After a moment, the phone rang again. Cat counted down from five, as though to illustrate with those mere five seconds to the person calling that they were insignificant, that she was busy with far more important matters. And to Kara, it felt like a lifetime too.

“Are you finished with your hissy fit?” Cat scolded the caller, and then after a moment her eyes lit up. “Very good. That… that number works. Here’s how it's going to work, Fridays 6pm-8pm are now your slot. If you can’t make it, if you’re late, that’s on you and the fee stays the same. The money is in our account every week, Thursday night at the very latest. Yes… like a retainer.” She rolled her eyes and rubbed her temple. “Never show up drunk, never show up on any illicit substances, never show up unshowered or unkempt. I’ll send over our banking details and some forms, go through them carefully and email them back by Wednesday of next week. See you Friday.” Cat clicked the phone.

Kara swallowed and gave her the look.

Cat inhaled and paused for a moment, “Fifty percent. That’s my cut with this client.”

“Thirty.”

“Fifty.”

“Forty.”

“Fifty.” Cat folded her arms and dug her heels in. “You haven’t heard the number yet…”

“Fifty,” Kara said, “And I go with you to your hospital appointments so I see with my own two eyes you’re doing the treatment.”

Cat swallowed and thought about it for a moment. “Done,” she agreed. “Remember when you said you don’t work with entitled, spoiled types?”

Kara blinked. “Has it metastasised to your brain already?”

“Funny.” Cat scowled. “She starts with you Friday, you’re going to have your work cut out with this one.”

“So it is Lena Luthor?”

“Well it was hardly going to be the Queen of Sheba.”

“How much?” 

The question made Cat smile. “Ten grand work for you?” Her lips widened into a smirk.

“Oh. I thought she would go at least double the preferred client fee—”

“A week, not a month. She’s paying ten fat fucking big ones per session.” Cat failed to bite back her giddiness, it bounced and wobbled in her voice. “That small problem about the rent? I think it’s covered.”

[Find this ahead of the curve plus more similar stories HERE.](http://theevangelion.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 4

Ten thousand dollars per session was both a huge amount of money and... not that much at all in the grand scheme of things.

Between her six preferred clients, Kara brought in forty thousand dollars a month. Sixty with Lena now on the books, once Cat had taken her cut. That was her guaranteed, no matter what, worst case scenario pay day. Sixty thousand dollars a month, seven-hundred and twenty a year plus change — assuming she didn’t take any walk-in appointments.

After she paid her dues to the dungeon and deducted her income and state taxes, there was around twenty-five thousand in the pot, three-hundred thousand a year, give or take. After rent on her two bedroom city apartment — twenty thousand a month remained. Then there was the monthly cost for her workwear and other accoutrements, because bespoke fetishwear and toys didn’t come cheap. That left her with seventeen, maybe eighteen thousand. Business insurance, healthcare, food, utilities, student loan and car repayments, that took her down to sixteen thousand. Her pension fund, which Cat had insisted when she first started out was the _most important_ thing she could do for herself, that ate two thousand a month. And on a good month, ten thousand went into her savings account. So far, she had two-hundred thousand stashed away which was only now scraping up to be something close to a respectable mortgage deposit for something half-decent in the city.

The remaining four thousand a month left her with a grand-total of eight hundred or so in spending money a week, pro rata. Still more than most, Kara knew that, but a long, long, long way away from the sixty thousand she started with.

Eight hundred a week really was too easy too burn through when all was said and done. She was a foster tearaway who had never been taught financial management, a kid in a candy shop, and that kind of money burned a hole in her pocket. If it wasn’t collectible action figures, it was full-price resale tickets to theatre shows she always dreamed about seeing when she was a kid but never thought she would have the money for, if it was neither of these things it was clothes, rare vinyls, trips and vacations, and once in a while, the odd charitable donation so she didn’t have to feel bad about any of it.

And so, inevitably, she did take the odd walk-in client. The ones she had built enough of a passing rapport with to know it was straight-forward money, at least. At four hundred a session, if she did five or six per week, once taxes and dues were taken off the top, that left her with… enough to make it through to the next week without having to look at her checking account. It wasn’t a watertight financial management strategy, Kara knew that, and she didn’t need it to be, a life without having to check her bank balance was more than she had ever dared to dream of eight years ago.

Same as it was for her back then, there were girls just starting out at the club who were left nearly in the negative at the end of the month when all the associated costs of being a whore were deducted — ironic really that sex work was both a labour of love and a _labour of love_ — but such really was the case. It wasn’t just dominatrix work; stripping, escorting, modelling, it was all the same story. Sex sells, but goodness, it comes with its costs too. Perhaps if the Four Horsewomen ever went under, that would be the subject of her blog. _The slut tax._ It was a working title, not a good one, albeit accurate.

Thankfully, Cat had been a good mentor and warned her about the state of things when she first started out — that the job would take time, passion, dedication, and even then it was the luck of the draw as to whether it would all work out or not — it definitely wasn’t a gig for a quick buck despite how things appeared on the surface. Always reinvest back into your business, always put twenty percent of your earnings away, get a private pension, and pay your taxes. These were the shadow rules of longevity, and Kara made sure to follow them.

Still, in the guts of her comfortable city apartment, surrounded by the symptoms of her success, curled on the sofa in her cosiest expensive pyjamas, scrolling through the forwarded emails that Cat had sent over this morning from the Queen of Sheba herself, she could not fathom how someone could have _ten-thousand dollars a week_ to throw around on this sort of pursuit. It filled her both a sense of relief and a sense of morbid curiosity that she didn’t go upstairs to Lena’s apartment that night; relief because the maintenance of clear boundaries was going to be important with the likes of Lena Luthor, and morbid curiosity because what kind of toilet did a woman with that much money have in her house? That was the question Kara needed an answer to, deeply.

She settled in with a mug of warm tea and went through the boring stuff, reading and not reading, forcing herself to go back over the bits she’d scanned and skipped over as though she were studying for a test. But then she got to the screening questionnaire, the one she had specifically designed for clients who intended for a more long-term personable arrangement. That was when her interest piqued.

_What are your expectations and/or goals for the sessions?_

**To explore myself, to explore this as a medium for personal growth, to explore this as a method of regular, contained, bookended catharsis so I can get through the week without falling apart at the seams.**

Kara blinked and read page three again, it was far more introspective than she had dared to expect. After their first meeting, partly once she had realised who Lena actually was, partly after she dropped her home and declined her off to go upstairs, the picture she was left with was one of a spoiled, bratty, entitled girl who didn’t know herself half as much as she thought she did. The stereotypical high-stressed, high-strung, high-rolling city executive who just needed to blow off some steam and didn’t care to think too much beyond that.

Granted, Lena had snapped during her session with Leslie which did thicken the plot — but despite getting to do what she did best: soothing the girl, making it right, putting a bookmark at the end of the experience, Kara had simply put it all down to adrenalin and novicience on Lena’s part. Lena had gone knocking on doors within herself and never expected the Devil to answer, but he did, he _always_ did, and while that was monumental for Lena, it was ultimately just a hiccupy day in the office for Kara. Nothing terribly out of the ordinary, and so she hadn’t given too much weight to it.

Apparently the Devil must have said something that stuck with Lena Luthor. Enough to give her the ten-thousand dollar hard sell, at least. Kara had clearly been proved mistaken.

She glugged a sip of tea and rubbed her temple, wondering which of her two pictures of Lena were most accurate. There was both the spoiled, bratty girl who didn’t know how to accept no as an answer, and also the initial assessment she had made earlier that evening, when Lena had just been a sad girl at the bar with the world on her shoulders, Kara had found that version of her quite endearing, quite earnestly human in a way that not many people who wandered into the club dared to be. Perhaps it was both, perhaps it would have to be both the former and the latter if there was going to be a medium for personal growth like Lena wanted.

_When you imagine yourself back at home after a session, what does that evening look like for you?_

**In an ideal world? Blissfully quiet. I soak in the bath, I don’t think about anything important, I put on warm pyjamas and make dinner over a good podcast, and then I go to bed early and sleep all the way through undisrupted until morning.**

When the questionnaire had first been drafted, she included that question to ascertain two things about the (mostly) men who sought her services: whether the client was mainly using the session for sexual gratification, which she had no strong feelings about either way; and whether they were going to be the dangerously clingy type, which she had very strong feelings about. She had seen all sorts of answers in her time, and anything that was indicative that the client was unable to ringfence the session in the context of their personal lives was an immediate red flag that required further clarification. It was ruthless but important, her services were more emotionally intimate than most, and because of that, “Do nothing but think about the next time I’ll get to be with you, Mistress.” — was a frequent, and entirely unacceptable answer.

Apparently that wasn’t a concern with Lena though. Her answer to the question earned a small smile and a brief daydream of a happy girl with bruises all over her bottom, stood in her kitchen over a hot pan of something good, peacefully listening to This American Life while she rubbed at her throbs and aches wholly satisfied by the state of things. There was something nonsexual about it all and that left Kara with a feeling of warm indifference. Sex was a good thing, and she personally found her role as a dominatrix incredibly sexually gratifying, but the idea of BDSM being an important, unerotic process of daily living for someone else? She found herself wanting to be an active participant in that endeavour. _It was very, very cute._

The phone rang and startled her.

“Mistress wants to know if you can come in early?” Leslie didn’t give her a chance to so much as say hello.

“Why does Cat want me in early?” Kara furrowed and sipped the last of her tea.

“I’m supposed to be learning how to do a six point florentine pattern but I keep missing my third beat.” Leslie sighed. “She said you’re good at teaching it, apparently she’s giving up on me for the day.”

“I’m only good now because I sucked the first million times when I was learning how to do it, you’ll get the hang of it trust me — and hopefully not catch yourself with the floggers half as much as I did.” Kara laughed, “I’ll swing up at four. You guys already there? Do you want me to pick up food?” She eyed the clock, it was already getting on for two.

There was a small pause.

“Don’t think this makes us friends, Kara,” Leslie murmured, stewing with jealousy despite constantly asserting that she had no jealousy over the past. “I’m only asking you because Mistress told me to. We’re not… _friends_ ,” the word was uttered with a sense of repulsion.

“Oh I wouldn’t even dream of it, Leslie.” Kara smiled to herself, unbothered by the petulance. “I’ll see you at four.”

***

The current appraisal of the entire property portfolio stood in the region of eight-hundred million dollars. It was both a large amount of money and… not that much at all in the grand scheme of things.

Lena had done the math, had paid better minds to do the math too, and the money barely touched the sides in terms of funding her entire project from start to completion. Sure, there was always the congressional programme funding route, L-Corp certainly had enough representatives and senators in the back pocket to see to that. But Lena didn’t want to be that kind of CEO, she felt entirely above that, and so she leaned back and glanced over the material, thinking and not thinking, unsure whether it was worth taking a risk and selling off a portion of her media collateral in order to get her plans for sustainable free energy off the ground.

“Ms Luthor?” the junior assistant, Katelyn, greeted sheepishly from the door.

“Decaf. Almond, one sugar please.” Lena didn’t take her eyes off of what she was busy with. “And—”

“A blueberry muffin, whole wheat if they have it and regular if they don’t. I remember.”

“If you remember then what is it you need?”

“She’s on line one. Rebecca said the only time I should interrupt you today is if _she_ called,” Katelyn passed the blame on. “I can tell her to call back?”

“No, no.” Lena sat up and pushed a long sigh, “Thank you, if that’s everything.” She forced a smile.

She had instructed Rebecca some days ago that should a woman by the name of Kara call her direct number that she should be put through immediately, although she gave no suggestion as to who Kara might be beyond a person she now had personal and business dealings with. Best for everyone that way, if word got out about any of it then eight-hundred million dollars would be the least of her problems. Tonight was going to be the night, and Lena imagined that there were things to discuss surrounding that.

In her mind, before she picked up the phone, Lena practiced at least ten different ways how to say hello. She hadn’t spoken to Kara since she had been dropped off and given how that ended she wanted to approach this with more… decorum. This was now a business interaction of sorts, a transactional relationship, and with that came a familiar sense of comfort. Lena was used to operating in professional, contained, measured ways, and now that she had familiar descriptors such as ‘business’ and ‘transaction’ to ringfence around the idea of being beaten and punished again, it wasn’t all half as scary. It was all suddenly, wonderfully… _tangible_.

“Hello?” Lena managed calmly. 

_Nailed it_ , she thought to herself with a small sigh of relief.

“You’ve changed the keys to the front door. That’s against the law, Lena, and I’m assuming your million dollar legal team advised you about that, which begs the question...”

Lena jolted in surprise and realised it was the other important woman she had instructed her personal assistants to put through without hesitation, the _soon to be_ ex-wife.

“Oh, I didn’t- I haven’t-” Lena stopped and composed herself. “It wasn’t purposely to keep you out, Sam. You know the security team was going on for months for us to get a biometric system installed. I’ll call them and set up an appointment for you—”

“Be sure to do that,” Sam interrupted sternly. “I want to be able to come and move my things while you’re at work.”

“Understandable,” Lena remained calm.

“You called me sixteen times last Wednesday, what did you need to discuss?”

“Well if you had answered _last Wednesday_.” Lena stopped and took a breath, forcing herself to be measured and cordial. “It was nothing important in hindsight. I was at the Junior League luncheon, I didn’t know whether to expect you to be there too.”

“Do you understand that this happening? That this very real?”

“The divorce?” Lena paused. “Yes, I think I do.”

“Then why would I be at the _fucking_ Junior League luncheon, Lena?”

“Well we’re—” Lena saw the failed logic, the fallacy in her thought process. “Sorry, just getting used to us not being on the same team anymore,” she acquiesced.

“We were never on the same team.” Sam scoffed. “It was always you on your own team.”

“Did you call for an argument?” Lena snapped.

“No, I didn’t.” Sam paused. “Get the lock problem fixed by Monday at the latest. This was just a courtesy call instead of going through the lawyers, your last and only.”

“Mhm. Love you too, bye.” Lena hung up and barely resisted the urge to throw the desk phone across the office.

***

The air was thick with rain that refused to fall, thick and bloated and heavy and fighting itself. That was how it felt. That was how Lena felt too. Stuffed and brimming and brooding and unsure of herself, all of a sudden. She caught a glimpse of herself in the blacked out window front, and then her stomach slowly settled and her lungs then remembered how to be lungs again. This was happening. _This was really, really about to happen again._

She had rushed home an hour early just to change, to decompress, to take off the expensive suit, the lipstick, the louboutins, remove any all and any symptom of… _billionaire finery_ , as Kara had so imaginatively thought of it.

The jeans were pulled on, the sweater pulled over, hair slung up in a scruffy ponytail, the leather jacket sleeves pushed up her forearms. The girl at the bar, she once again became. It was like looking in the mirror at an almost stranger, at a woman that Lena had maybe once knew in passing but didn’t know well enough to say hello to anymore. The girl in her reflection did exciting things, did them just for the sake of doing them, didn’t have to think about it, didn’t have to worry about anything. Lena Luthor and the woman staring back at her? They were worlds away from one another. And so Lena inhaled a deep breath and in a single instant decidedly stopped being _Lena Luthor._

She pushed the door open and walked down the steps into the reception room, breathing, thinking, not thinking, excited in a way she felt ashamed to admit. She had privately mourned for the bruises when they started to fade and disappear on several different levels. It was as though they were reminders, markers, rewards for her suffering, places that she could press and lean against during the work day and remember what it felt like to have not been the most powerful person in the room; aches that she could touch and remind herself that she didn’t have to feel guilty and remorseful, not all the time at least. The thought of earning a few more filled her with giddiness.

The music was a low, subdued throb that hung in the air as she entered the near-empty bar. She caught a glimpse of a female worker stacking glasses on the back of the bar turned away with her white hair pulled up in two messy buns on her head, and she suddenly remembered a flash from the last time she was here, a faint memory of a whip lashing the backs of her shoulders. It left her with a funny feeling in her stomach.

“A straightener for your nerves, Bambi?” Leslie caught sight of her in the neon mirror as she finished stacking glasses.

“Just a single vodka soda please, diet.” Lena remembered the rules about not showing up drunk and said nothing else concerning their previous encounter.

Leslie poured the drink and maintained the silence for a moment, turning back to her tasks.

“You want to drink it here or shall I call upstairs and let her know you’re around?” She gave Lena sideways glance from the top shelf.

“You can let her know I’m here.”

“Your ten minutes early, most people prefer the drink first.”

“I guess I’m not most people.”

“You’re certainly not.” Leslie smirked and nodded, turning back to her work. “Takes balls to walk back into a place like this after the last time you were—”

“Is it okay if we don’t do the recap?” Lena blushed.

“I’ll go ahead and make the call.” Leslie disappeared in the back.

After the notification, Lena was instructed to go on ahead and ask for room seven. At the top of the stairs, the same man from last time received her. There were no questions this time, no paperwork to fill in, all of that had been sent back and forth some days ago after careful deliberation about the things she was decidedly comfortable with exploring. The man simply pointed to the very end of the hall and instructed her to knock and wait.

Lena knocked loudly and took a small step back from the door. She waited for a moment, for longer than a moment, unsure if she should go ahead and knock again or whether that would be rude. Then the door finally swung open, and Lena didn’t dare breathe.

“Punctuality is appreciated, Lena,” Kara smiled warmly and ushered her in. “Please, go and kneel by my chair and tell me about your day while I get a copy of the paperwork you sent over out of my things.”

“Yes Kara,” Lena swallowed.

She felt a hand softly touch her bicep, fingers gliding down and coming undone at her elbow. Lena stopped and turned around, blushing, nervous, unsure of herself, exhilarated beyond words.

“Yes _Ma’am_ ,” Kara reminded gently, her expression warm but stern.

[Find more plus exclusive content HERE](http://theevangelion.tumblr.com)


	5. Chapter 5

Room seven was cosy, was opulent, warm, and textured, and unlike room four Lena was afforded a rug to kneel on which was far easier on her knees. She did precisely that, kneeling beside the armchair and footstool in her underwear, brain emptying outwards, calm and surprised by how easy it was to enjoy this in the absence of herself.

“It seems like restraints and impact play were the most appealing to you on your forms, I’ve made thorough work out of them today so I feel like I have a good idea what your limits and goals are.” Kara sat down and pushed her glasses up her nose, smiling a little. “I would like to put you in some sensual rope, get to know one another a little better, and then we can play with some different floggers and see what you think of the strap?” She pushed out a sigh and glanced down at the woman politely kneeling there.

“Oh,” Lena realised her cue. “When you say strap... do you mean—”

“I mean a stiff strap of tanned leather that I would like to hit your bottom and the back of your thighs with.” Kara smirked slightly and stroked Lena’s blushing cheek. “Not the strap I’m sure you’re thinking of, troublemaker. You should be so lucky…”

“Do I really have to call you Mistress?” Lena shrunk slightly, embarrassed.

“Well appellations are important in this room, it’s important to know and maintain the boundaries of who and what we are to the other but we can negotiate.” Kara was clear but unpushy, stroking the little creature’s head and humming in thought. “Would Miss Kara be a happy compromise for you, Lena?”

“Could you not call me Lena the whole time while were…  _ you know _ … doing this?” Lena tried hard not to shirk away from her touch, but Kara seemed to pick up on her discomfort and gently retracted her fingers anyway.

“You don’t strike me as the kind of person who likes being called a whore or a cunt,” Kara sighed thoughtfully, and the words were without malice, as though they were so familiar on the end of her tongue that they weren’t derogatory in the slightest. “That being said, you also don’t strike me as the kind of person who likes being called princess or kitten, either.”

“You have something else in mind?”

“What would you think to darling, instead ?” Kara enunciated every letter.

Lena thought about it and swallowed, nodding shyly. In her mind it was quite sweet. The word wasn’t too sugary, too babyish, or too familiar. It was warm and malleable, something Lena felt that she could make her own. It was… just right. Lena nodded more certainly.

“I’m going to need something more substantial than a nod.” Kara did it again, managed to be soft and stern all at the same time with nothing more than a sharp look.

“Yes Miss Kara,” Lena licked her lips and closed her eyes. “Darling is fine by me.”

“And you’re comfortable trying some rope and impact today?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“There’s a good girl,” Miss Kara beamed.

Lena watched Miss Kara stand from the armchair and wander to her cabinets and drawers. She craned her neck to watch, to see what she was doing, the things she was collecting, but then Miss Kara peered back over the ball of her shoulder with a displeased, trying look.

“Please don’t make me blindfold you so early in the evening. I’m not above it. I thought of you this morning when I bought the lingerie I’m wearing underneath this kimono and I think it would be a shame for you to miss it.” Miss Kara danced her fingers over the silky material of her gown.

“Yes Ma’am.” Lena obediently snapped her eyes down to her knees.

After a few minutes that felt like a lifetime, Miss Kara came back to her with a small collection of items that had been carefully curated and gathered. There was a light thud, Lena looked down to see neatly tied off piles of pink rope on the floor beside her. When she looked back up at the dominatrix, Miss Kara was peering down with a happy smile and two leather floggers in her other hand. She placed them down on the table and turned her attention to the rope, crouching down to pick one up and unwind it, demonstrating it to Lena.

“Have you ever been tied up before?” Kara asked and laid a portion of it through her palm, dragging the rope over the join of skin between her thumb and hand. Lena managed a tepid shake of her head, curious and silent. “It’s not so scary, you’ll see,” Miss Kara reassured.

“Will it hurt?” Lena asked.

“Only if I want it to hurt, my darling. Today I don’t want it to hurt, and so it won’t.” Miss Kara rubbed the back of her shoulder, and Lena sunk into the palm and inhaled a deep breath. “Put your arms behind your back.” Lena instinctively did as she was told.

For a moment, Miss Kara did nothing but drag her fingers over her biceps, then up and over her shoulders, doubling back around and grazing over her spine. It was a ticklish sensation, tingly, pleasant, relaxing almost. Lena couldn’t help but think of a time when she and Sam… she stopped instantly. Sam didn’t belong in this room. This was her room now, her place to be free of her life, Lena allowed her mind empty of everything else.

“I want this to belong to me now, darling.” Lena snapped her eyes open as the back of her bra was pulled. “Are you comfortable with that?” Miss Kara added.

“Yes Ma’am,” Lena whispered.

“Good girl.” Miss Kara unfastened it and slipped the bra off her pale milky shoulders.

Despite the craving, her stiffened nipples were ignored. Lena found herself privately grateful, there was something far more intimate about the thought of this being disconnected from sexual pleasure, for now. Miss Kara focused on her arms, positioning them over one another behind her spine until she was satisfied. The rope was applied softly almost, looped around her wrists until they were snug together behind her back. It wasn’t rough, it was simply as though her body now belonged to somebody else, and Lena put up no resistance to that.

“So, girl at the bar,” Miss Kara hummed against the side of her neck. “What trouble have you caused today?”

“Oh…” Lena licked her lips and drew a blank as the rope dragged and pulled over her skin. “No trouble, I guess. I tend to be quite measured and polite.”

“Measured, polite girls can still cause trouble.” Miss Kara began to tie her a little harder, a little tighter. “You’ll forgive me for being thorough, why take the chance?” She exhaled against Lena’s ear.

The rope was pulled over her bicep, pinning it to the side of her chest, pulled above her breasts and then over the other bicep, pinning that one to the other side of her chest, the end of the rope cinching back around itself so her wrists were secured higher up her spine. Lena closed her eyes and submitted to it, breathing, thinking, not thinking, enjoying the sensation of the rope hugging her skin.

By the time Miss Kara was finished, there was no escape even if she wanted to put up a fight. There was rope above and beneath her breasts, squeezing them, her arms trapped either side of her chest, her wrists tightly secured behind her back. Nothing felt too tight, and just as she had assured, nothing was painful. She just… couldn’t move. Lena blinked and tested the rope, pushing, pulling, growing more and more aroused by the bondage.

“Is this…” Lena blinked and felt stupid for asking. “Is this the part where you hit me?”

“You know, a  _ Ma’am _ or  _ Miss Kara _ on the end of that question is probably the only thing in this room incapable of hurting you,” Miss Kara whispered softly against the flat of her shoulder, and Lena felt her lips pull and smile against her skin. “You should try and let yourself fall into the habit before I have to give you a firm push…”

Lena exhaled with a shaky breath, closing her eyes, flushed and pinkened with a warm kind of embarrassment. “Yes Miss Kara… are you going to punish me now, Ma’am?” She corrected herself.

“No, this is the part where I sit down for a few minutes and enjoy the sight of you in my handiwork.” 

Miss Kara chuckled and got up off the rug, sitting herself back down in the armchair. Lena peered up at her from her knees, drunk on it all. The incandescent lamp on the side table was dim and gentle on the eyes, it diffused soft shadows that contrasted with the pink glow of the chandelier lighting above, it made Miss Kara look like a counter reformation painting, like she was the only thing in this room that was meant to be seen. Lena swallowed and peered up at her, and Miss Kara did nothing but push a smile and peer right back down.

The rope… the rope felt like someone hugging her. The pressure was even and constant across her entire upper body. She closed her eyes and melted into it, enjoying the moment of quietness, the space to become acquainted with it all on her own terms.

“You look beautiful, Lena,” Miss Kara eventually broke the comfortable silence. “I love the lingerie you wore tonight, I think next time I might let you keep the full set on a little bit longer. I hope you won’t mind me being selfish in that regard.” She bit her bottom lip and pouted playfully.

Lena felt her cheeks grow warm and suddenly didn’t know where to look. “Thank you. I got them especially for this, Ma’am. For… for you,” she admitted nervously.

Kara leaned forward, the cheekiness melting off of her face until she was stern and pulsating with something else, something slightly predatory, something heady and intoxicating.

“Did you imagine me putting my hand inside of them?” Miss Kara’s voice was a husky, assertive growl. “Were you being naughty, Lena?”

“N-no, I- I didn’t. It. It wasn’t that,” Lena stumbled over herself. “I just… I bought them because they were pretty, and I thought you would appreciate that.” She looked away, slightly aroused and embarrassed about it.

Slowly, fingers pushed forward and took her by the chin. Miss Kara brought her stare back until their eyes were locked with one another. Lena felt her lungs forget how to be lungs, and each breath became stuck on the edge of itself.

“I like your answer better, darling.” Miss Kara smiled but didn’t let her chin go. “Next week, I would like you to call me in the morning and let me help you pick. Would you do that for me?”

“Yes Miss Kara.”

“Good girl.” The corners of her mouth pushed up. “Now, back to business, I refuse to believe you haven’t caused any trouble since the last time I saw you…” Her eyebrow piqued.

“I… I don’t know what’s acceptable to talk about. I don’t… I don’t want to use you as a therapist.” Lena swallowed hard and mentally ran through the long list of trouble she had caused — most of which was work or Sam related; two facets of her life that felt completely incompatible to this space.

“I know the thought of being an entirely different person is very appealing, I understand.” Miss Kara almost cooed as she stroked her cheek. “Why don’t I lead and ask the questions, and you can stop me if it gets too much?”

“Okay Miss Kara,” Lena agreed.

Miss Kara promptly stood up from her armchair and took one of the two light pink floggers from the table. It was long and slender, the tendrils looked like soft leather suede, and Lena felt her curiosity and arousal pique. Miss Kara twisted her wrist and expertly snapped the flogger around in a figure-eight motion as though she were warming up, as though the implement was merely an extension of herself.

“I think this one will be a nice warm up flogger, not too punchy, not too much spread, just enough to bring the blood up to your skin…” Miss Kara brushed and traced the long pieces of suede over her entire body. “I like to play gently with my prettiest toys.” She smiled slightly.

“You don’t have to be gentle with me,” Lena didn’t skip a beat.

“Well darling, then maybe I won’t.” Miss Kara raised her brow and walked around out of sight.

The flogger struck the back of her shoulders with a slow, building rhythm that was in fact quite gentle. It was a sensation that was neither painful nor comfortable. The ends of the flogger seemed to whip and wind between each shoulder blade, as though Miss Kara were doing a figure eight motion, twisting the flogger in her wrist with barely any effort at all. Lena closed her eyes, suddenly stuck, suddenly awkward. It was her own over expectations that left her… underwhelmed. She imagined that Miss Kara would begin to flog her and the world would become soft focus, a tempest would burn her skin, the split atom would be held in her hand, and she would float above the room weightlessly. Instead, she knelt there with her arms tied behind her back and found the sensation quite jarring.

“The boy who put the bruises on your wrists that you didn’t ask for.” Miss Kara sounded stern about the matter as she flogged Lena’s shoulder blades. “Did you put him in his place? We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I would like to know.”

Lena inhaled and held her breath, closing her eyes and closer to the truth than she had initially felt capable. The falls of the flogger hit her with a thud, the shoulder became warm and pink, and around and around it went like a rhythm that could be trusted and leaned into. It quickly stopped being a jarring sensation and instead became slightly hypnotising, like the tick of a clock, like the beat of a pulse, a motion that would not cease and so Lena simply had to truncate herself to fit between each strike.

“The opposite way around, Miss Kara,” she murmured.

“So he put you in your place. That’s all you have to say about it?” Miss Kara sounded full of disapproval.

“It was a long time coming.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Don’t you?” Lena inhaled sharply as the flogger beat her harder. “You said less than ten minutes ago that measured, polite girls can cause trouble. Is it really so hard to believe I wasn’t an innocent party?”

“I did say that, and I meant it too, but the answer to that conundrum should never be violence…” Lena wasn’t sure if she was joking. 

“But… we’re…” Lena blinked and peered over her shoulder.

Miss Kara was winding the flogger in a figure eight motion with a calm, almost disinterested look on her face. It was as though she were so expert in the muscle memory that the flogging required very little — if any — attention on her part. Lena wondered whether it was the line of questioning that she was far more taken by, which left them at odds with one another in that regard. Despite that, she found the dynamic more arousing than she should. It was a soft interrogation of sorts, one that suddenly felt far more tangible than traditional therapy ever did. Miss Kara caught her staring and just smiled softly, smiled as though she had all the answers.

“Violence as an adjective and verb are entirely different kettles of fish, especially in the absence of anger. Am I beating you for any reason other than because you want to be beaten, Lena?” Miss Kara’s eyebrow piqued.

“Hopefully because you want to, too.” Lena grew wetter.

“Well.” Miss Kara’s mouth pursed into a pleased, sultry smile. “Is this my confessional or yours? And turn yourself back around. As pretty as you are, you’ll know when I want to look at you, darling.”

“Yes Ma’am.” Lena brought her gaze back to her knees.

“So… do you still love the boy?”

“I’m not sure I ever did.”

“Mmm. It’s easy to misconstrue contentment and love, you’re not to be blamed for only realising that now.”

“Are you sure?” Lena couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. “I don’t think I was ever content. I think that was her—” Lena stopped suddenly and swallowed hard, instantly hoping Miss Kara wouldn’t pick on that thread. “His. I think that was his main complaint. Never satisfied, never content, never happy enough, I always needed more than he or anyone else could offer.”

“Do you need more than what I’m offering you now?” Miss Kara allowed the flogger’s tendrils to come to a gentle rest, then hung the implement over her shoulder as she walked around to stand in front of Lena. “Would you like me to take you over my knee and spank a little affirmation into you, Lena?” She peered down with a fixed, serious stare and rubbed her hot, pinkened shoulder blades.

“That depends.” 

Lena couldn’t bring herself to look directly into the Mistress’s eyes, couldn’t bring herself to allow the other woman to see what a trembling, nervous, wet mess she had become in a mere space of minutes.

“Depends on what, exactly? I’m sure I can oblige.”

Lena grew brave and snapped her eyes up to stare at her.

“Tell me I’m a good girl?” She blushed but refused any humiliation over it.

Miss Kara bent down and tucked a rope of jet black hair behind her ear, fingers dancing down her sweating neck, drawing over the flat of her shoulder, doubling back and cupping behind the column of her neck until Lena was tethered to her touch and melting into the sturdiness of it.

“You are a good girl,” Miss Kara promised with a quiet, certain tone. “And I’m determined that by the time you go home tonight you’ll share my sentiments, pretty thing. Now take your panties off and put them with the rest of your things...”

***

Kara had said to her the first night they met that the main thing that brought people through her door was the illusion of punishment and forgiveness —  _ to reach a place where right and wrong simply didn’t exist _ .

Lena leaned back in the bathtub, almost snuggling underneath the bubbles, allowing the water to slosh up and over her body like a blanket, melted and soaked into the heat and existed right there in the palpable absence of herself. 

It was delicious, it was without contrivement, it was a state of calm she had otherwise been unaware she could achieve for herself. It was this thought that persisted, perhaps the only thought she felt presently capable of at all, she had gone out and got this for herself — it was hers, selfishly hers — and she didn’t have to explain or justify it to  _ anyone _ .

She now understood what Kara meant that night; the feelings she felt were not complex as they had been the first time with Leslie. This, this was simple. There was no guilt. There was no self-loathing. There was no longer a black and white concept of right or wrong — which she knew wouldn’t be a permanent state — but for now it was wonderful. There were no sins to be punished, no mistakes to make right, her debts were paid and her dues were settled, and so she sunk her entire body under the hot water and absolutely grinned into the freedom of it.

It was the spanking that changed things. To lie over another woman’s lap completely naked, legs slightly spread, overt sexuality completely removed from the equation, spanked hard, spanked pink, spanked until there was no longer pain but just a warm enveloping sensation, until all she could do was profusely cry and cradle Miss Kara’s thigh, sobbing, begging, pleading, not for it to stop but for more and more and more.

Miss Kara had obliged, petting her head, spanking her in a tempo that changed from hard to soft to sensual to hard again, promising her that she was a good girl and there was nothing to feel bad about, not for a little while at least. When they had stopped, Lena didn’t stop believing what she had been told for a single moment. Miss Kara had cradled and snuggled her slack, sweating, exhausted body and promised it all over again until she slowly came back to herself.

_ She was a good girl _ , Lena didn’t feel small or embarrassed by the thought. It was a welcome and persistent feeling that cradled her entire evening. She eventually clambered out of the bath, dried herself off, pulled her dressing gown over her lightly bruised body, and made headway in the kitchen in terms of a half-decent dinner. She was a good girl, and for tonight she didn’t have to be Lena Luthor in the ways that counted the most. It was everything she had wanted, plus more.

She had been home for around two hours when the phone finally rang and disturbed her beatifically good mood. Lena had promised herself all week that tonight would be hers, no work calls, no distractions, just mindless self indulgence, but she remembered the phone call with Sam earlier in the day… and she remembered that she forgot to call the security people like she promised she would. Despite what she had promised herself, she couldn’t help but groan and reach for the phone, half-ready for the argument.

“And to what do I owe this pleasure?” Lena said, deadpan.

“Oh…” A soft voice paused. “I apologise, Lena, would you prefer me not to contact you without checking beforehand that it’s a suitable time?”

Lena suddenly realised who it was and felt her heart skip a beat. 

“Oh my god! Kara I’m— Shit. Sorry. I was expecting somebody else,” she chuckled. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” She was far more enthusiastic this time as she hurriedly took the pan off the heat.

“You left a bracelet behind tonight. I’ve taken it home for safekeeping until next week but I just wanted to let you know where it was.”

“Oh… thank you.” Lena inhaled and leaned against the kitchen island. “You… you could have just sent a text?”

“I could have just sent a text,” Kara agreed.

“But you wanted to call me?”

“I wanted to call you.”

“Because you wanted to check in with me?”

Kara laughed slightly. “Because I wanted to check in with you, yes.”

“I’m okay, I’m more than okay. I feel… amazing, actually.” Lena scratched her head.

“Good, that’s good. I really enjoyed tonight too...” Kara paused for a moment and inhaled a breath. “Hey Lena, can I ask you something?”

“Oh.” Lena stalled and instantly knew what was coming. “Kara, I had a really great time tonight but I think we should keep this professional. I'm not looking for anything—”

“What?” Kara sounded confused.

Lena closed her eyes and wished the floor would swallow her whole.

“Nothing, nothing. What were you going to ask? Please, continue.” Lena managed.

“What did you make for dinner in the end?”

“Pardon me?”

“In your forms, you said that your ideal evening would be a hot bubble bath, warm pyjamas, dinner and a good podcast… all of it makes sense, but I- well. I keep coming back to the dinner. So, my question is what do you make for dinner when you’re enjoying your perfect evening?” 

Lena heard the sound of covers rustling, of a body shifting in the sheets, and she imagined Kara curled up in bed unable to sleep until she knew the answer. She couldn’t help but nibble the corners of her mouth where a grin was beginning to form. She glanced at the cooling pan and decided better of admitting that dinner was reheated pasta leftovers from yesterday.

“Braised pork belly, seared in port wine,” Lena lied with a smile.

“A vintage?”

“What else would you expect with all my… billionaire finery?” She glanced around at her fairly modest apartment, amused by the assumption if anything.

“What year?”

“Oh… the Smithsonian couldn’t actually carbon date it.”

Kara laughed hard at that, and Lena felt it was her crowning achievement of the day. 

“Well,” Kara sighed. “I better let you get back to what you were doing. I’m looking forward to seeing you next week. Your bracelet is safe with me until next time.”

“Bye Miss Kara.” It slipped off Lena’s tongue with surprising ease.

“Bye little darling.” The phone clicked.

Lena stood there for a moment with an impossibly wide smile, phone clutched in her hand, heart beating into her throat. Next week couldn’t come fast enough.

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	6. Chapter 6

Lena knocked on the door and waited patiently while the sound of movement creaked from the other side. Juggling her things, checking over her neatly coiffed hair, bubbling with utter excitement, her breath grew tight as the footsteps creaked closer. The door swung open and Lena swallowed hard, blank headed, awestruck, breathing in the sight of her master of the universe, who stood there with a fresh mug of coffee in her hand, glasses pushed up out of the way on top of her blonde hair.

“Good evening, Lena.” Kara pushed the door open wider with a beaming smile. “You’re ten minutes early.”

“Oh I was around the neighbourhood anyway, remembered you had my bracelet so I thought I would get it before I forget,” Lena explained tersely and ducked under her dominatrix’s arm, a half-lie if ever there was one. 

“Here it is,” Kara smiled and handed over the bracelet from the pocket of her hung up coat. “Take your clothes and panties off and bend over my bureau desk, please.” The instruction startled Lena with its suddenness. 

Lena stared back at her, dumbly. Her mind became utterly blank, as though all she could process was the woman in front of her on a moment to moment basis, constantly catching up on herself and the conversation as they went along. When they had first met, it was the sense of authority that made her weak and curious, the gentleness of it, the imposition, the invisible pedestal that she first thought was the dominatrix routine but had now come to understand was just… Kara, riding crop or not.

“You’re still tired from work,” Kara observed and walked over, plonking herself down in the large chesterfield chair beside the small vintage bureau desk. “Come here, come sit here with me. Let’s talk about your day and then get into—”

“Can I sit on your lap?” Lena spoke up before her brain had kicked into gear.

There was a long pause. Lena didn’t dare speak or correct herself, embarrassed, beside herself with embarrassment that she had been so brash, and all she could do was stand in front of the desk while the dominatrix blinked, her brow becoming truncated, furrowing and knitting together, eyeing her up like those words were the last thing she had anticipated would come out of her plump mouth.

Slowly, Kara’s lips pulled into a small thoughtful smile.

“Someone’s an eager little girl tonight.” She looked her up and down. “Take your clothes off, come sit in my lap.”

Lena closed her eyes and nodded with a smile, she did as she was told and stripped right there in front of the dominatrix. She had been permitted to sit on Miss Kara’s lap, and that may as well have been an invitation to perch on a throne. Lena delicately sat herself down on her dominatrix’s thigh, cheek pressed to her shoulder, eyes closed, yawning slightly, tucking herself under the roof of her chin, deeply inhaling the smell of fresh perfume. As far as good starts to an evening went, this was up there.

“Do you have a submissive, or you know, a girlfriend or whatever, in your personal life?” Lena became nosy.

“What’s it to you?” Kara chuckled with her chin tucked over the troublemaker’s head.

“Just curious. I can’t imagine who you are outside of this place but I would like to…”

It was a truth that Lena kept truncated and abridged for the sake of brevity, because the whole truth was that she thought obsessively about it for most of the day. What sort of home the dominatrix lived in. The company she kept. The hobbies she had. The smell of her bed linen. The colour of her toothbrush. Whether she read in bed before she fell asleep, and if so did she lie on top of the sheets or in between them. Were there pets? How many? What kind? The type of things she kept in her bathroom cabinet. The snacks she hid on top of the kitchen cupboard. The films she played when the sky was thundering outside. Lena wanted all of it, every last bit of it, to know her dominatrix inside out until she was no longer a dominatrix but a fully-fledged woman with friends and family and tiny, tiny minutiae that only she was allowed the privilege of knowing.

“No, I don’t have a submissive.” Kara conceded and rubbed her back. “The only little princess I concern myself with is you.” Lena came over warm and flattered with the thought. “Try not to gloat too hard.”

“I’ll try.” Lena smirked. “So who do you live with?”

“By myself.”

“Me too,” Lena felt sad about it.

“How sad there’s no one around to put some bruises on your bottom when you need it the most.” Kara moved Lena’s hair over her shoulder.

Lena leaned forward and kissed her out of nowhere.

The kisses came in a flurry rather than one singular prolonged affair. There was a wrath to it, an insubordinance to the maintained rules that dictated their interactions. But she kissed Miss Kara, she grabbed her cheeks and she kissed her as deeply as she could because regardless of the punishment this… this was worth it. Miss Kara just hung there, blindstruck, allowing herself to be pecked and nibbled and gobbled and wholly enjoyed, her lips just barely pursuing each kiss as though she wanted it too but didn’t know how to say as much.

“It doesn’t have to be something,” Lena weakly whispered into the dominatrix’s lips as though it were a plea and tucked the blonde flyaways behind her ears. “It can just be… now?” She felt herself bloom with hope.

“This is… this is unorthodox.” Miss Kara cleared her throat, clinging to what little professionalism was left like a moth hanging around a dying flame. “Does this help you—”

“Does it help you?” Lena knitted her brows together and clasped at Miss Kara’s wrists. “Aren’t you fucking beside yourself with loneliness too?”

The tiny birthmark on Lena’s collarbone was taken up with decided interest. Miss Kara was perfectly gentle as she leaned forward and kissed it, her arms slipping around the small of the little troublemaker’s spine. The birthmark was sealed with half-a-dozen silent kisses, pecking and nibbling and gentle, as though Kara was preaching the redacted version of her prolonged loneliness into a small landmark that belonged to her, just her, only to her.

Lena pushed forward and slipped her hand around Miss Kara’s sturdy spine, around her shoulder, the dip of her ribs, desperate to feel her, to touch her, and then upwards into her breast. The dominatrix flinched as though she had just been awoken from a dream.

“Dirty girl,” she hissed and reached between Lena’s legs. “Filthy, slutty, naughty, bratty, bad little girl.” She pushed her fingers through the soft wet cunt aching for the pleasure and pain of the dominatrix’s attention.

“Show me what you do to girls who belong to you, Miss Kara?” Lena whimpered and allowed herself to let go.

Two fingers pressed with slow, unrelenting pressure all the way inside her cunt. Lena moaned and felt them curl, felt them press into that wonderful little spot inside of herself that made everything feel dizzy and tight. Miss Kara leaned forward and took a nipple in her mouth, suckling, nibbling, forcing it stiff under her careful teeth. Lena’s eyes snapped open on the ring of a hard slap. The sting was hot and immediate, the pink outline of a hand forming instantly on the inside of Lena’s thigh.

Lena understood the wordless instruction and opened her legs wide for her mistress.

“Good girl,” Miss Kara whispered into her neck and made a third finger fit. “Relax, breathe, don’t you tense up. How many fingers can you take?” She felt Lena's slick tightness pulse and bear down on her fingers with a deep, guttural groan.

“I…” Lena lost her breath. “I don’t know Miss Kara,” she whimpered and clutched at the woman’s shoulders for leverage.

Miss Kara smiled at that. “Well,” she whispered and nibbled the top of her ear. “I want to find out.” She fucked her until the noises were wet, delicious, sloppy, joyously naughty and loud enough to fill the room.

A loud shrill alarm sounded from nowhere. Lena felt the corners of her vision darken and dim and close inwards. She clung on desperately, huffing, aware of what was happening, angry that it was all coming to an end.

She awoke in her empty bed and switched the alarm on her phone off with a grumbling huff. The phone was placed back down, the blankets and pillows nuzzled, her body rolling and fidgeting and huffing as she tried desperately to worm her way back into the dream.

“Fuck,” Lena sighed in frustration and blinked herself awake. 

It was still dark outside, the way it was every morning. As grueling as late nights and early mornings proved to be, there was a sense of routine about it that made Lena feel slightly less lonely. Two months had passed since Sam left, and while she was alone six days out of the week in the ways that mattered most, the small comfort of routine kept her busy and occupied. An hour Youtube fitness session before breakfast, then sunny side eggs over sunrise while she ordered her calendar for the day, a twenty minute shower, a short car ride to the office, and by the time she got home again, the evening routine kicked in and kept her busy until it was time to sleep. There simply weren’t enough free hours in the day to occupy herself in any sort of meaningful way with the depression that had begun to build the last few weeks.

But today was Friday. It was the last Friday of the month, which meant it was time for the first sit down with the lawyers to hammer out the divorce. It was also Friday in the regular sense of the word, which meant she would head straight over to the dungeon after the meeting and get some sense spanked into her bare bottom. There was a routine in that too, a polite sense of ordinance that could be relied on and leaned into the same as a five o’clock wake up call or an early yoga session. She would arrive ten minutes early, Miss Kara would fulfil her needs, they would bid each other goodbye with measured warmth, Lena would get through the week just about unscathed, and the whole thing was rather boring and professional. It was absolutely a form of self care, merely a more elaborate one than most.

The sun was high in the sky and dazzling the road by the time her first two meetings were out of the way, and the highway was inundated with people. The traffic pulled slowly, chugging for a bit, then stalling to a halt. It would be like this for at least seven miles if the woman on the radio announcing the collision ahead was to be trusted. The passengers in the rear cab of the sleek town car had plenty to do to fill the time. There were phone screens in hand, computers on laps, communications and official statements underway. The boss just sighed and stared out of the window, flustered and only growing all the more flustered by the state of things.

“Cancelled your four o’clock,” Rebecca peered over her seat and handed a tablet with something on the screen that needed a digital signature. “The press team is asking if you want to make a personal statement to reporters this evening or if they should quietly release the news on the website?”

“You know, my brother once said there was no such thing as bad press.” Lena forced a small smile as she signed the screen and passed it back. “But now that L-Corp stock is plummeting, I’m inclined to disagree.”

“It will blow over,” the analyst sat in the front seat spoke up, she took the tablet from Rebecca and sighed. “I’m running the numbers and the share price is already starting to plateau. Most of the damage was the Russians short-selling the majority of their stock. Luckily, an investor just bought half a billion in L-Corp shares. The market price is stabilising.”

“Who was it?” Lena furrowed her brow.

“You.” The analyst smiled and turned the tablet back around. “Thanks for your signature.”

“Feels slightly counter-productive considering the whole point is to start breaking up the business and selling it off?” Lena glared.

“In time,” the analyst didn’t turn around from her seat. “Slowly slowly catchy monkey. The rumours spooked the Russians. They know you’re up to something, they just don’t know what. They’re out of the picture now, it will be back to business as normal this time next week.”

“Slowly slowly something alright.” Lena rolled her eyes.

The headache intensified with immediateness. Lena reached up and rubbed where her temples and prestinely tied back hair met, inhaling deeply. This broke at least three financial trading regulations that she could think of off the top of her head, and to compound the stress, finance blogs from here to Moscow were talking about nothing but the rumours that L-Corp was preparing to break up their collateral. It would seem there was a snitch in the midst. On top of all of that Lena still had her most stressful prospect of the day ahead of her, which meant Kara would have to work twice as hard tonight to beat a little calmness into her. 

“Lena, urgent call for you.” Rebecca reached over the headrest again to pass the phone to the grumbler.

“Not now.”

“It’s her.”

“Which her?” Lena snapped her eyes up.

“The one you have a meeting with later.”

“That doesn’t clarify my question.” Lena grew tired and grabbed the phone. “Hello?” She pinched her nose and prayed it wouldn’t be the soon to be ex-wife.

“So you have two important meetings, huh?” Kara exhaled and somehow made Lena feel calm with nothing more than a sentence.

“Today, yes, but am I ever late for one of our business dinners?” Lena smiled into the receiver. “What can I do for you?”

“Satin or linen, what do you prefer?”

“In what context?”

“Do you really want me to describe it while you’re in a car full of colleagues?”

“And how would you know what I’m up to right now—”

“The newscopter. The Bloomberg Channel is tailing you, apparently L-Corp is going to make a big announcement today?” Lena pinched her nose and grumbled, but Kara just laughed at the surrealness of it. “If you need to reschedule, just this once, then I think I can make an allowance.”

“I’ll be prompt and on time as always.”

“And the answer to my question?”

“Satin,” Lena coughed awkwardly. “See you later.”

“See you later, my darling.” Kara hung up and left the human headache with a funny, pleasant feeling in her tummy.

***

“So what did she say?” Cat rolled her eyes over to the beaming ray of sunshine.

“Satin,” Kara lifted her brows. “I’m thinking of some fun suspension tonight, satin over her eyes, satin in her mouth as a gag, satin dragged between her legs, satin kimono, satin sheets, satin everything.” Kara grew more and more carried away until the other occupants of the oncology ward began to stare at them.

“Please, speak a little louder, I don’t think they heard the part about rubbing a piece of satin over her cunt...” Cat lifted her hand towards the other people pretending not to listen.

Kara just smiled, unbothered. “You want a snack?”

“I would rather shit out a knife than eat right now,” Cat grimaced.

“That bad?”

“That bad.” Cat confirmed.

“Have they said when the side effects will… you know…” Kara asked but didn’t ask outright because it felt too uncomfortable and rude.

“Another week and I’ll start losing my hair,” Cat almost whispered, as though the other people hooked up to their chemotherapy weren’t in exactly the same position. “I’m going to have to figure out a solution to the Leslie situation.”

“Or, you know, just tell her?” Kara shrugged.

“That will go down like a lead balloon.”

“And what’s the alternative?” Kara balked. “You just gaslight her and pretend like you didn’t have the hair the whole time?”

“Oh that’s genius.” Cat sat up suddenly. “That could work.”

“Fuck off, Cat.”

“I could use ice chips.” Cat slumped back down. “If you insist on being here you may as well be useful, you know, between the satin fantasies.” She lifted a judgemental brow.

“Do you remember not long after you got me used to the basics that night we had together when Storm Maria came through and we couldn’t leave the dungeon?” Kara asked suddenly.

Cat grew stiff and uncomfortable.

“If Leslie hears you talk like that she’ll kill us both—”

“I’m not— _stop it_. No. Don’t do that. I’m not pining,” Kara screwed her brow and shook her head. “Just, do you remember?”

“It’s hard to forget,” Cat conceded and nodded her head. “You took your first cold caning and then I fucked your ass until you squirted.”

“Okay who is giving the room a TEDtalk now?” Kara lifted her hand and cut her off as disapproving eyes glanced their way over magazines and iPads from every direction. “Just… how did you know I was ready? How did you know what I needed? All I can remember is being too shy to tell you what I wanted but then you gave me all of these experiences that felt so… perfectly thought out and considered?”

“I winged it.” Cat burped over her glass of water.

“I’m being serious,” Kara rolled her eyes.

“I am too!” Cat glared sideways. “I hate to disappoint you, I know you like to think I’m this magical dark fae that has the answers to everything, but the simple truth is that we had discussed early on that those were things you eventually wanted to build up to and so I told you what I was going to do, I did them to you, and I just trusted that you were capable of telling me if it wasn’t working out for you. I winged it.”

“My most formative sexual experience and you just fucking winged it?” Kara glared.

Cat seemed genuinely flattered. 

“Your most formative sexual experience?” She repeated quietly with a gloating little grin.

“Oh fuck off, Cat.” Kara grumbled and slumped back into her chair. “Get your own ice chips.”

“Slowly, slowly catchy monkey.” Cat just looked at her as though she were a complete novice all over again. “You’re what? Eight sessions in with her? I’m sure she’s probably ready to try some things that are a little more intermediate. If you’re worried she won’t have a positive reaction to something, don’t do it. If you know she will like it, just double check just to be sure. Christ, it’s like you’re—”

“Nineteen and wet behind the ears all over again, I know.” Kara rolled her eyes. “Fine, yes, you’re right.” She sighed and relented. “Do you think she would see the funny side if I sent a stripogram over to her office to ask if she wants to try some orgasm edging tonight?”

“Fuck her, I’ll see the funny side.” Cat eagerly handed over her phone, her eyes rolling as she watched the little idiot grow reluctant and unsure of herself. “But I'm so sick?” she whispered sadly and dropped the cancer card unapologetically.

“Fine! Fuck you, fuck you a thousand times! Fine!” Kara snatched the phone.

[Find more here along with exclusive extras attached to this story's universe!](http://theevangelion.tumblr.com)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FLASHBACK

Outside, the sky was turning inside out, the hurricane blowing through town had torn trees from the ground and left them hanging awkwardly in the road like broken limbs. The rain battered the building, eighty mile-an-hour winds tearing through the streets like the weather had something to prove. Inside, there was nothing but Mistress Cat. It was her insular universe. Kara was the centrifugal force that kept it all spinning.

“I’m going to cane you, Kara.” Kara felt the ridges of a rattan cane press against her ass cheeks, it sent her brain into a frenzied scatter. “I’m going to beat you, bruise you, make you cry, and draw something very remarkable out of you little girl.” Mistress Cat stepped around, unhurried and totally calm. “Life… it should be full of learning experiences, Kara. You can consider this one of yours. You know just how much I enjoy rewarding my most astute little pupil…” Her eyes glittered with fondness. “You want to be rewarded, don’t you?”

“Yes Mistress,” Kara eagerly nodded.

“Good, after all I brought your favourite toy.” She nodded over to the soft silicone rainbow strap-on that was waiting on top of the bar. “If you’re a very good girl, I might just have to choose a new pretty hole to fuck you in—”

“You’re going to fuck my ass?” Kara blurted.

Mistress Cat closed her eyes and smirked.

“Mistress,” Kara instantly corrected her lack of deference. “You’re going to fuck my ass, _Mistress_?”

“If you’re a good girl,” Mistress Cat whispered and opened her eyes again. “If you show me that you deserve it.”

“I thought ass-fucking was a punishment?” Kara whispered.

“Rewards can be served in a punishment-shaped box. You’ll see.” Mistress Cat left it at that.

Kara stared at her as though she were the ultimate authority in the universe. Mistress Cat was that in both presentation and purpose. She was so small, so slight, such a petite woman and yet she had this bolshy, gigantic, overbearing presence that could not be explained or understood. Kara loved being around her because of it. The last twelve months had been _revelatory_ for the little tearaway.

Mistress Cat had taken her in off the streets and gave her an education of sorts. An apprenticeship in the kind of dark sultry goings-on that happened in unassuming clubs like this one. When the club was open Kara worked as a trainee Mistress, learning all the little tricks of the trade. When the club was closed she repaid her teacher with total submission and domestic service. It was an arrangement that offered her a view of both sides of the coin, to be dominant, to be submissive, to be both things with equal mechanical proficiency until she figured out which one fit her best.

“Kara,” Mistress Cat hummed and turned at her little pet, swishing the cane with a terrible whippy noise that followed each movement. “Are you with me?” She lifted her brow.

“I’m with you Mistress,” Kara cleared her throat and stared down acutely on her Mistress's black combat boots.

The lowering of her eyes was procedural. It was a reliable sense of protocol to be leaned against. She was down here and Mistress Cat was up there. Her brain accepted these things as both reality and metaphor. _Sub-space_. Kara was learning new words for these things.

Eye-contact protocol was the first rule Mistress Cat had patiently taught her. In the beginning there was no corporeal punishment for disobedience, which was totally counter-intuitive to what Kara imagined their arrangement would be based around. Mistress Cat thought that it would be a reductive endeavour. The way she practiced dominance was about fostering personal growth and commitment to service — and the act of punishment was moot in the absence of serving that purpose. What good would it do beating a girl who had already been chewed up by the world? Mistress Cat was above that, or at least she always promised such was the case.

Mistress Cat never needed to lift a hand to reestablish proceedings. She would just utter those sacred and terse words: ‘Eyes down, do not make me ask you again.’ Which was enough to have Kara reeling and obedient — simply because Mistress Cat had asked nicely, simply because Kara respected her more than she had ever respected any authority figure before.

Mistress Cat was deliberate and precise like that, everything was thought out and structured. Mistress Cat showed endless patience and interest, took care of Kara in a way that Kara felt nobody had before. Corporal punishment became an intimate, sacrosanct transaction that only started occurring once Kara felt ready to accept the suffering. _Once she herself asked for it_.

The thing that made her feel ready to ask for punishment was truth and trust. Mistress Cat knew the whole history of her life through the foster system, the twists and turns, the trauma she was still processing, the inability to trust authority, and Mistress Cat wholly respected it from the get-go. Mistress Cat was patient and lacked excitability at the thought of striking Kara in any capacity. In fact, she seemed totally averse to the idea. Which only made Kara want it all the more.

Kara felt, for the first time in her life, that someone truly had her best interests at heart. It made every new discovery as their relationship grew—pleasure or punishment—bubble with excitement while still rooted in a sense of safety as though they were old hands at it. Mistress Cat loved her, and Kara had no doubts.

“I am not going to begin until I am certain you are with me.” Mistress Cat perched her slender figure on the edge of a lone stool by the upturned, darkened bar. “Be a good little kitty and show me who you trust with your conflictions, Kara.” She pushed out one of her clean, polished combat boots.

“Mistress...” Kara closed her eyes, whispering the word with a tiny smirk as though it were both an answer and a question.

“What are you waiting for?” Mistress Cat became dour. “Submit, soothe yourself, do it until that pretty little head of yours is completely empty. There are no conflictions in this space unless _I say so_.” She nudged her foot forward.

Kara blushed and crawled towards her, the little bell on her collar jingling slightly. It made her Mistress smirk wickedly. One thin smirk was all it ever took to leave Kara reeling with breathless, excited embarrassment.

“There you go,” Mistress Cat crooned as Kara sunk her hips down on the top of her boot, her puffy wet slit grinding against the polished leather. “What do you say when I give you my attention, Kara?”

“Thank you for spoiling me, Mistress.” Kara closed her eyes and felt Mistress Cat push the boot into her cunt, lending some pressure where she wanted it the most. “Thank you, Ma’am,” Kara said again with a nod, much more convincingly this time.

“Tell me what’s on your mind. I can sense you’re stuck on something.”

“Nothing, Mistress.” Kara gasped, her blue eyes narrowing into slits as Mistress Cat gave her cunt a little hard thump. “Ma’am?”

“Don’t ever lie to me, kitten.” Mistress read her perfectly. “We won’t begin until you give me what I want, and what I want is to understand you.”

“I’m just… it’s stupid. I think… I’m worried in case I disappoint you,” Kara mumbled and pressed her hips down, grinding, rocking, soothing herself with the safe shape of her Mistress's presence. “I don’t want to let you down, I don’t want you to get bored of me.” She pressed her cheek forward into Mistress Cat’s thigh.

“What have I always told you?”

Kara met her Mistress's sombre stare. There was something lurking underneath her expressionless, porcelain face. Kara didn’t know if it was pain or pity, or maybe both. But she knew her Mistress was feeling things, working through her own emotional processes, private and parallel. It made them allies in that regard.

“That I’ll break your heart long before you break mine, Mistress?” Kara asked innocently.

Mistress Cat pushed a slow smile. “Well yes, there is that.” She sniffed and became dour. “What else do I always tell you, Kara?”

“That I will always be at your side one way or another?” Mistress Cat nodded at that.

“You’re coming into your own now, Kara. You will either be my submissive or stand by my side in a different capacity, but you will _always_ be mine. You will disappoint me sometimes, that is natural, but I will never toss you away. Do you understand me, little girl?”

“Yes Mistress,” Kara whispered and relaxed slightly.

“Do you feel safe with me today?” Kara smiled at that. “Are you in the right headspace to try something intense? I would like it very much if you were. But, I can also be patient and put my favourite toy away for another day...” Mistress Cat’s cane cut the air with a whippy sound to enunciate her point.

Mistress Cat had a radical way of seeing things; different to any perspective Kara had encountered in her previous vanilla relationships. It was okay to be unhealed. It was okay to be a work in progress. To be compounded by her experiences, to not want to be touched sometimes, to not feel safe somedays, to need space, to need to be held, the variety of it all was always okay. Kara just had to express it and Mistress Cat would do the rest.

“I feel safe, Mistress, _I’m with you_.” The words husked out. “I want you to make me cry in lovely ways.” She bit her little giddy smirk and stared up at her teacher.

“Well, you certainly made a mess on my boot.” Mistress Cat appraised the arousal that had been smeared on her the top of her shoe, eyes slitted with amusement. “Bend over, you’re going to take you first caning and then I’m going to reward your suffering. If it becomes too much and we need to change things up…”

“I’ll let you know and say mercy, Ma’am,” Kara promised.

“Good girl.” Mistress Cat stroked her long blonde hair. “Over the bench.”

***

The cane struck her bottom in little whippy taps. It was a strange sensation. There was barely any force behind the strikes but Kara felt the sting with more intensity than she anticipated. Mistress Cat only had to apply the smallest increments of force to get the whimpers she was looking for.

It was intensely uncomfortable but not intensely unpleasant. The pain… it was like being in choppy open water. In the absence of Mistress Cat, Kara knew wholeheartedly that she would eventually sink despite her best intentions otherwise. But Mistress Cat was a great life-jacket. She had a way of getting Kara up and over the waves, safe and out of danger.

A thwack sent Kara jolting against the restraints.

“God it’s intense!” Kara cried out and gritted her teeth.

Mistress Cat brought the cane away and calmly stepped around. “It’s supposed to be intense,” she whispered and moved a piece of Kara’s long blonde hair. “Is it _too_ intense?” She searched Kara’s eyes.

“No,” Kara said instantly, her breathing coming under control. “It’s just… intense. I was just observing out loud, Mistress.” That made Mistress Cat laugh slightly, and then she stepped back around out of Kara’s sight.

“Observing out loud is good tonight, Kara, it let’s me know you’re engaging with me. For the record, this is tweening.” Mistress Cat resumed the light whippy little strikes and gave them a name. “And this,” she said, and Kara felt the cane draw away from her hot skin. “Is caning—” Another sudden thwack hit her bottom.

“Fuck!” Kara bellowed and closed her eyes.

“Indeed, fuck.” Mistress Cat laughed softly. “Hush, you’re okay, just breathe. Listen to my voice and do nothing else but breathe…”

Kara inhaled, exhaled, and felt out the sensations of her body with a reluctant sense of curiosity. She was still unlearning the life-long habit of dissociating from pain. Mistress Cat felt that it was an unhealthy response, and so she never resumed striking Kara during games like this until she was certain Kara was engaged with the process.

Kara’s backside was throbbing with a searing pain that didn’t seem to dissipate quickly. There was a discernible outline to the pain— _a welt_ —Kara realised and suddenly felt giddy at the thought. There was something delicious about bruises, and she knew from observational experience that canes left a deep angry mark when they were wielded with intention. Suddenly the pain didn’t seem so scary. She was up and riding the wave. She continued to inhale and exhale on Mistress Cat’s instructions, nodding silently that she was ready for another.

“Well if you’re sure…” Mistress Cat struck her harder this time.

Kara snapped her head back with a noiseless whimper. Mistress Cat grabbed her by a fistful of hair and kept her there, neck taut, head pulled back, their eyes locked for a brief moment. Then, Mistress Cat craned down and breathed against the back of her ear, hushing, crooning, reminding Kara to breathe through the sensation.

“Tell me what you’re feeling,” Mistress Cat instructed with absolute calmness.

“Pain!” Kara huffed with gritted teeth, overwhelmed by the sting.

“Well I can see that, silly,” Mistress Cat whispered with an amused bounce to her tone as she let Kara’s head slacken forward again. “Dig deeper, get beneath it this time, tell me where the suffering takes you.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, Mistress,” Kara shook her head.

“Alright,” Mistress Cat whispered and pulled away. “Then I’ll show you.”

Six paced strikes of the cane left Kara reeling and topsy-turvy. The first one made her gasp and hold her breath, the last one made Kara exhale her lungs in a long loud groan. Mistress Cat wasn’t heavy handed or indeliberate. After the final strike the cane was promptly flicked under her arm and her softer ministrations resumed. She pressed her hips against Kara’s stinging bottom, settled her weight on top of her spine, lips grazing over the top of her ear once again.

“Just breathe and lean into the sensation, Kara. Let it be solid, let it be real, let it have a shape and take you somewhere. The pain you’re feeling…” Mistress Cat drew her fingers over a thin raised welt. It made Kara shiver and finally release a single tear. “It’s just a doorway to step through, that’s all, and on the other side there can be pleasure or the resolution of guilt. I want you to decide this time. You tell me what’s on the other side of that door for you tonight,” Mistress Cat dug her nose into the crook of Kara’s tensing neck and waited her out.

“Mistress—” Kara felt startled by the hoarseness of her own voice. “I was almost there but then I lost the momentum, I’m sorry, I still don’t know,” she whispered.

“Don’t apologise,” Mistress Cat pecked her cheek. “Would you like me to show you again?”

“Mistress,” Kara swallowed and felt far more steady and resolute. “Can you please cane me until I say red?”

Mistress Cat seemed taken aback. “That doesn’t sound productive, Kara.”

“I think it would be, Mistress,” Kara reconfirmed.

“Explain why,” Mistress Cat gently prodded for more detail. “You don’t need to do things like that in any attempt to impress—”

“Cat, I know.” Kara instantly felt frustrated by the insinuation.

Kara immediately regretted it with burning shame once she realised the careless mistake she made.

“Listen to me and listen well, little girl.” Mistress Cat’s tone became a low growl. “Do not interrupt me again when I’m speaking, and do not drop deference when you address me otherwise we will stop and you will sit in time-out for the rest of tonight writing lines.” Mistress Cat’s voice was slow and deliberate, completely removed of harshness or aggression. “It takes effort to be the Mistress you need, Kara. It takes patience, and commitment, and deliberateness. Do not disrespect me in your endeavour to punctuate your feelings, in the way I do not disrespect you by raising my voice in any endeavour to punctuate my own.”

The polite dressing down left Kara contemplative in a way physical punishment never did. Mistress Cat was complex like that. Kara had seen her shout out of anger, had seen her hiss and snarl and everything in between. It was always terrifying and yet it had never been directed at Kara. Not even once. Mistress Cat knew well and good that with a bad-tempered single raised octave she could demolish Kara into a puddle of tears. Yet she never had—not even in the moments when it was owed and due.

“I’m sorry, Mistress.” Kara swallowed and remembered her place. “Really, I’m sorry. You’re a good Mistress to me and I won’t—” She felt a rock form in her throat. “I promise I won’t do that again, Ma’am, you’re owed and due a certain amount of respect. I think I know that better than anyone.”

“Good, that’s exactly what I want to hear. Now explain to me, why do you think you want to be caned until you say red?”

“I want you to cane me until I say red so I can crash through the door, Ma’am.” Kara cleared her voice and hesitated. “I want you to cane me until I say red because you’re my Mistress, and I trust you, and I feel safe with you. I think it will get me through the pain and let me figure out what’s on the other side waiting for me, Ma’am.”

“Ah. So you do trust me, that’s comforting,” Mistress Cat ran her fingers down the ridges of Kara’s spine. “You’re sure?”

“More than anything, Mistress.”

“And you trust my judgement even when it’s inconvenient to what you think you need?”

“I trust and submit only to you, Ma’am.” Kara nodded.

“Then trust my judgement when I say this—” Mistress Cat drew her fingers back up between twitching shoulderblades. “No,” she whispered.

“No?”

“No.” Mistress Cat pressed her lips against the back of Kara’s neck, her voice a gravelly murmur stuck deep in her throat. “No, I’m not going to make you safeword. I’m not going to do that because I don’t want to reinforce the idea that red is a goal, or a proving ground, or something to aim towards. Red is a fail-safe. You think it will make you feel exorcised to press the button but it won’t. You will still have gone past the limit, perhaps only by an inch, and that is still too much. So no Kara, I’m not going to intentionally make you say red.”

Kara inhaled and exhaled, nodding and trying to take it all in.

“How do we move forward, Mistress, given all of that?”

“How about I make the decisions and show you how this experience can be both pleasure and catharsis without the need for safewording. I’ll hold your hand and walk you through the door, and next time you can try to do it by yourself.”

“Okay Mistress,” Kara simpered and felt safe. “Your idea sounds better.”

“I know,” Mistress Cat sighed. “They usually do.”

The hurricane outside worsened. It sounded as though the weather were at war with itself. Kara couldn’t empathise. Internally, she was calm and unconflicted. She didn’t know if minutes or hours had passed. She didn’t care. Her problems and conflictions belonged to Mistress now in every sense of the word. She was safe, and she was riding far above the crashing waves despite their towering height.

She felt totally in-tune with her body, with Mistress Cat, with the way each strike of the cane took her closer and closer to a space in her brain she felt had never accessed before. It was more pain that she felt she had ever experienced. It was more serotonin than she knew her brain could produce. It was all, and it was more, and it was glittering and wonderful and hers. _All hers._

“Are those tears I hear princess?” Mistress Cat asked with warm indifference.

“Yes Mistress,” Kara hiccuped.

“Are they good tears?”

“They are _lovely_ tears, Mistress,” Kara sobbed and tucked her chin towards her neck as the cane thwacked her again.

“Good, that’s good. It’s okay if you cry—” Again, Mistress Cat cracked her bruised backside. “—So long as you’re with me, so long as you’re not drifting away, then you can cry yourself blue in the fucking face for all I care.”

Something changed. It was almost imperceptible, like the flicker of lights or the shifting of wind. Kara couldn’t put her finger on it. She felt a click deep inside of her brain, both a flutter of panic and a subduing sense of calm, simultaneously. It was stark. It was contradictory. She did not have words for it, and yet that was alright. Mistress Cat was in tune and seemed to temper herself, waiting for Kara to acknowledge the unacknowledged.

“Mistress—” Kara found her voice. “I want my Mistress, please,” she mumbled to herself, unsure of how to make it make sense.

“I’m here.” Kara watched her shadow on the wall, watched her Mistress lower the cane and finally place it down. “I’m with you, Kara, right here. Where are you?” she posed.

“I’m here. I’m with you— _and_ _I’m safe_.” Kara wept and shuddered, her teeth clenching together as every welt on her backside throbbed in its own funny little rhythm. “I’m with _my_ _Mistress_ and I’m safe—” The tears burst and dripped down her red cheeks.

“You’re with your Mistress,” Mistress Cat repeated with a stern and ordered sense of calm. “And you are safe.”

Mistress Cat’s weight was on top of her spine all of sudden. This time, Kara felt as though it were an extension of herself. The heaviness was a blanket, a safe thing to melt into, and as Mistress Cat’s thighs sunk and pressed into the bruised criss-crossed flesh of her bottom, Kara felt every reservation escape her body as though there was a gash in her gut.

She belonged to Mistress Cat, and Mistress Cat belonged to her. Kara closed her eyes and allowed that sentiment to have a solid shape. It was a shape that seemed to perfectly fit a tiny space in her heart she did not otherwise know existed. She was suffering, and she was free.

“My bottom hurts,” Kara whispered.

Mistress Cat laughed that soft, funny, amused laugh. “That’s okay, it’s supposed to hurt. I would be concerned if it didn’t,” Mistress mused, her nose tracing along the side of her girl’s neck. “I want you to close your eyes and just listen to the sound of my voice.”

Kara nodded.

“The mistake that you make time and time again, Kara, is assuming that I am the one in the driver’s seat when we play these games.” Mistress Cat hummed with a throaty murmur. “I’m just the seatbelt… someone has to fucking save you from yourself. Do you understand?”

“Yes Mistress,” Kara whispered and the wave of calm subdued her deeper.

“Keep your eyes closed, dig deep and get underneath the pain, and open that locked door inside of yourself. Whatever is lurking behind it, welcome it with open arms.” Mistress Cat drew her nose along the back of her neck and made these things sound so simple. “I’m here, I have got you, and you are safe. Open the fucking door, Kara.”

On the inside, Kara was a woman finally at peace with herself. The door wasn’t a door, it was a maze, a riddle, a tangible thing that had been hidden in plain sight for so long and now it made sense. There wasn’t pleasure. There wasn’t pain. Behind the door there was nothing but a void of blank space.

“I think I understand now, Mistress.” Kara nodded slowly, and she felt in awe of the revelation. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Who are you when distraction is stripped away, Kara?” Mistress Cat wanted to understand these things.

“A void,” Kara replied. “It’s not my pain and suffering behind the door Mistress… _it’s yours_.”

For the first time, Mistress Cat seemed to not know what to say. She hesitated until the silence became insufferable. Kara remained calm despite the sudden state of flux. She shifted slightly, she turned her head to the side and caught her Mistress's sombre blue eyes, nodding up reassuringly at her god of all things as though she had all the answers.

“It’s okay,” Kara soothed. “Your hurt, your pain, the little broken parts of you that don’t make sense, I’m going to keep them safe and absolve you of them. I think, behind my locked door, that’s the place where other people’s conflictions are going to live out their days.” She nodded with great certainty.

“There’s your answer, Kara. You’re dominant.” Mistress Cat smiled and craned down, tender and accepting of these things. “In time, at least, with the right tools.”

Kara panicked slightly. “I don’t—I don’t want you to stop being my Mistress. I don’t want.” She stopped, breathless and full of regret. “I don’t want you to go.” Her brow knitted.

“Well I didn’t say that,” Mistress Cat murmured into her scalp and instantly calmed her down. “You’ve still got to grow into those paws. Slowly, slowly catchy-monkey.” She softly laughed and pressed her fingers into the cane welts, as though reminding Kara who was still in-charge. “You’ve been a good girl but I have no little broken parts of myself to give you, Kara, and so in light of that I think I’ll stick to my original plan and give you the fucking you deserve instead.” She instantly pulled away and strode towards the strap-on waiting on top of the bar.

When Mistress Cat fucked her, she always did it as though the strap-on was an extension of herself, as though her pleasure was first and Kara was merely an afterthought. Tonight was no different. Kara watched with a breath held in her chest. Mistress Cat tightened the straps, then pumped lubricant in her palm and stroked the shaft slick.

“Eyes back in your fucking skull!” Mistress Cat snapped her stare across with lightening reflexes.

“Yes Ma’am,” Kara obeyed instantaneously.

When Mistress Cat strolled back over, six inches of rainbow coloured silicone softly bobbing between her hips, Kara felt her brain empty outwards. Her skin was sore. Her bottom was welted and bruised. Mistress Cat didn’t care. She just ran her thumb over the raised pink marks and made a long, low crooning sound. Kara felt palms spread her cheeks open, a thumb rubbing a little lubricant around her tight twitching hole. Mistress Cat pressed inside slightly and coated that too.

“Just relax,” Mistress Cat hushed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Okay Mistress,” Kara slightly simpered, a small smile creeping up her cheeks. “I trust you.”

“Have you been a good girl, touching yourself just the way I told you too?” Mistress Cat hummed and pressed her thumb a little deeper. “I hope you have, Kara.”

“I’ve been using the plug you gave me, Mistress,” Kara whispered, blushing and aroused. “I haven’t cum this week without it in, just like you told me.”

“Good girl.” Mistress Cat removed her thumb and replaced it with the head of her strap-on. Then, the slow push of her hips left Kara breathless and reeling. “Breathe in,” Mistress Cat instructed with a dour tone. “And out…” She gave another solid push and filled her a bit more.

“Fuck!” Kara whimpered and dug her fingers into her Mistress's hands.

It wasn’t painful. It was intense. Kara felt the shaft come to a shallow rest. The sensation… it was not what she expected. The pressure felt so acute, as though there was a billion nerve-endings inside of her body that she never knew existed, and Mistress Cat was playing with them like an instrument she was more than proficient in. The noises from Kara’s mouth became whorish and obscene.

“Kara if you can’t speak with a sense of decorum then you can’t speak at all—” Mistress Cat’s hand clamped around her plump lips and stifled the whimpers. “You’ve been a good girl, let’s not spoil it.” She thrusted slowly.

Kara always imagined that being fucked in the ass would be a punishment. That was her only frame of reference. She had seen Mistress Cat fuck male submissives in the context of a professional session. It was ruthless, horrifying, breathtaking and erotic. Mistress Cat never afforded them an inch or quarter — and Kara learned afterwards that it was why the boys always paid top dollar for her services.

Kara closed her eyes and felt the pressure of Mistress Cat’s hand grow tighter around her mouth. The rest of her body, however, was gentle in its ministrations of her need. Mistress Cat fucked her slowly and allowed her to acclimate to the pressure on her own terms.

“There’s a good girl,” Mistress Cat whispered and drew fingers through her long blonde hair. “Don’t tense, let your pretty fucking hole relax for me—” Kara felt her eyes roll into the back of her skull as the strap-on bottomed out. “There you go!” Mistress Cat sounded proud.

“Thank you, Mistress,” Kara stuttered into the hot palm around her mouth. “Thank you, thank you, _thank you_.”

“Baby,” Mistress Cat softly laughed as though the joke was on her. “You haven’t seen anything yet.” Mistress Cat grabbed Kara by the shoulders and pulled her backwards into the thrust until their hips rolled and crashed.

Time became an indeterminate concept. It held no authority over them or this space. Kara melted into her Mistress as though she were the sturdy, solid, dependable thing that could be clung to for buoyancy. Mistress Cat fingered through the wetness between her folds, slowly rubbing her clit, building her up to an orgasm that felt different than any Kara had experienced before.

“Mistress,” Kara whispered, jarred and suddenly panicked. “Ma’am, I. I need to go to the bathroom—”

“No you don’t,” Mistress Cat whispered against the back of her ear. “Let your body relax, Kara.”

“Mistress.” Kara grew stiff and nervous.

It was a pressure inside of her body she had never felt before. Mistress Cat was right, it didn’t feel like she had to pee, but that was her only frame of reference, as though something was full and bloated and ready to explode. She clung to her Mistress’s hands, wailing and whimpering and blind with glittering pleasure.

All of a sudden, all at once, gushing, crying, glittering, and golden, Kara came like she had never cum before.

“Good girl,” Mistress Cat grinned, laughing and pleased. “Such a pretty little mess you are when you come undone, girl.”

“Did I just—” Kara blinked, aware of the dripping fluid between her trembling thighs. “Please tell me I didn’t—”

“You didn’t.” Mistress Cat sighed. “That, my dear, was your first full body orgasm. Hopefully the first of many,” Mistress Cat whispered and rubbed through hot wet folds that begged for more attention.

“Thank you, Mistress,” Kara grinned and twitched, glittering and ready for more.

“Your thank-yous mean nothing to me, precious, but don’t you worry.” Mistress Cat began to thrust again, slowly. “One day, a long time from now, you’ll figure a more substantial way to repay me for all I do for you. The devil always collects her dues, Kara, you’ll see.”

***

Kara glanced at the ticking clock. Ten minutes give or take until Lena arrived. The room was satin and silk, everything from the bedsheets to the lingerie to the long strips of material she would use to bind Lena in ribbons and bows. For now, Kara sat with herself calmly and remembered that night with fondness.

She had left Cat back at the hospital with a snack she wouldn’t eat and books she wouldn’t read. The memories of her, of who they used to be to one another, they persisted and became difficult to compartmentalise.

Kara couldn’t help but wonder if it was a state of pre-mourning. A feeling of hopelessness. An awareness that her saviour was on the cusp of mortality in the only way that truly mattered and… Kara couldn’t fix it. All she could do was remember a time when Cat was the master of the universe, and she nothing more than an astute pupil who looked at her with rose-tinted glasses.

But, Cat was doing her treatments. There was still hope, still good possibilities, and Kara decided to focus on that instead. Lena was one of the wealthiest women in the world, difficult, strong-headed, cold and ruthless, though Kara still liked her a little more than she should given all of that. There wasn’t a clear pathway to victory but Kara felt that with a little arm-twisting she could remedy a few big picture problems with Lena’s deep pockets, perhaps buy the building for Cat, pay for the best doctors, make sure everything was taken care of on the back-end. Feelings aside, she was a working girl above all other things.

Three consecutive knocks to the door stirred Kara from her ruminations. She arose and fastened the tie on her silk gown, emptying her brain of all inconsequential matters as she walked to the door.

“You’re five minutes early,” Kara observed with a smile, her expression filled with warm indifference.

Lena smiled and nodded slowly. “I’ve had a bad day,” she sighed. “Could you forgive me for wanting those extra five minutes with you?”

“Forgiveness is what I do best, Lena.” Kara ushered her inside and took her leather jacket. “The question is, are you ready to be absolved?” She traced her fingers along the back of Lena’s shoulderblade.

“Miss Kara,” Lena’s voice became a low, embarrassed tone that murmured in the back of her throat. “I’ll take whatever abundance of it you have to offer.”

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